August 5, 2010
Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) provided support for a feasibility study, to outline one possible approach to measuring the impacts of the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) on returns to public investment in R&D. The aim is to define and scope the data collection requirements and further model developments necessary for a more robust estimate of the likely impacts of the proposed FRPAA open archiving mandate. The study was authored by John Houghton with Bruce Rasmussen and Peter Sheehan of the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University.

March 18, 2010
Campus-based open-access Publishing Funds: A Practical Guide to Design and Implementation
The SPARC guide, by Greg Tananbaum, is not an advocacy document promoting the launch of Open-access Funds. Rather, we aim to help institutions that are curious to better understand why funds are being launched, the considerations and decisions involved in their creation, and how existing funds are being managed. Should you choose to move forward with creating an open-access fund, this guide will help you to do so with your best foot forward.

October 7, 2009
Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice (Browse or download)
“How do we pay for Open Access?” is a key question faced by publishers, authors, and libraries as awareness and interest in free, immediate, online access to scholarly research increases. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) examines the issue of sustainability for current and prospective open-access publishers in a timely new guide, “Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice,” by Raym Crow.

April 22, 2009
SCOAP3 – Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

January 23, 2009
Campus-based publishing partnerships: A guide to critical issues

Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant

Campus-based publishing partnerships offer the academy greater control over the intellectual products that it helps create. To fully realize this potential, such partnerships will need to evolve from informal working alliances to long-term, programmatic collaborations.

SPARC’s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships: A Guide to Critical Issues addresses issues relevant to building sound and balanced partnerships, including: Establishing governance and administrative structures; Identifying funding models that accommodate the objectives of both libraries and presses; Defining a partnership’s objectives to align the missions of the library and the press; Determining what services to provide; and Demonstrating the value of the collaboration.

SPARC’s Campus-based Publishing Partnerships will help libraries, presses, and academic units to define effective partnerships capable of supporting innovative approaches to campus-based publishing.

April 1, 2008
OPEN DOORS AND OPEN MINDS: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution - A SPARC/Science Commons white paper

February 3, 2008
Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy - Copyright Considerations and Options - A SPARC/Science Commons/ARL joint white paper
Michael W. Carroll, Villanova University School of Law On January 11, 2008, the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) adopted a revised Public Access Policy for peer-reviewed journal articles reporting research supported in whole or in part by NIH funds. Under the revised policy, the grantee shall ensure that a copy of the author’s final manuscript, including any revisions made during the peer review process, be electronically submitted to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central (“PMC”) archive and that the person submitting the manuscript will designate a time not later than 12 months after publication at which NIH may make the full text of the manuscript publicly accessible in PMC.

June 1, 2006
Create Change
An advocacy and education resource co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries to engage the academic community in reclaiming scholarly communication.

February 1, 2006
Publishing Cooperatives: An Alternative for Society Publishers - A SPARC Discussion Paper

Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant

This SPARC discussion paper proposes a federation of discipline-specific publishing cooperatives as an alternative operating model for society publishers. Publishing cooperatives would be owned, capitalized, and controlled by nonprofit publishers as users, with publishers sharing risks and benefits proportional to their use of the cooperative. Such publishing cooperatives can provide a scaleable publishing model that aligns well with the values of the academy while providing a practical financial framework capable of sustaining society publishing programs and supporting their transition to non-subscription funding models.

August 1, 2005
Sponsorships for Nonprofit Scholarly & Scientific Journals: A Guide to Defining & Negotiating Successful Sponsorships
This guide describes how nonprofit publishers can evaluate whether a corporate sponsorship program might be appropriate for their journal and, if appropriate, develop a sponsorship program as a component of the journal’s income stream.

December 30, 2004
The Future of Scholarly Communication in the Humanities: Adaptation or Transformation?

Richard K. Johnson, Fmr Executive Director, SPARC

Everywhere enterprises are weighing the demands of adapting or transforming their business models against the risk of ultimate extinction. Music, motion pictures, retailing, travel, telecommunications – giant changes are underway in these industries and many others. For agile players, evolving consumer demands may present new opportunities. Others will be left behind like buggy whip makers as new entrants emerge. But we’re interested in scholarship, not commerce. Are the rules different here?

July 24, 2004
Setting Up a Nonprofit Tax-Exempt Corporation
There may come a time when you want to establish your scholarly publishing or other venture as a nonprofit corporation qualified for Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. There are other types of nonprofit classifications, but 501(c)(3) is the most common and typically the most appropriate for a nonprofit publishing organization.

June 15, 2004
The SPARC Initiative: a Catalyst for Change

Bas Savenije, Utrecht University Librarian & LIBER representative to the SPARC Steering Committee

SPARC was started in 1997 by a number of large research libraries in the US. Its main goal was restore a competitive balance of the STM journals publishing market. A number of programmatic areas were initiated in order to realize this goal: SPARC Alternatives, SPARC Leading Edge, SPARC Scientific Communities, and SPARC Communication and Advocacy. Since two years SPARC puts a special emphasis on Open Access, including institutional repositories. The paper gives an overview of the activities of SPARC and its partners in these areas. The results are evaluated and compared with the measures defined in 1997. Finally, the paper describes the possibilities for libraries to contribute to the realization of SPARC’s goals.

March 4, 2004
Open Access: Unlocking the Value of Scientific Research

Richard K. Johnson, Fmr Executive Director, SPARC

We see it all around us: industries are changing and adapting in response to new information and communications technologies. In the music industry, for example, a struggle is underway between companies with a financial interest in defending their pre-Internet business model and the demands of the emerging online marketplace. Similarly, journal publishing’s entrenched print regime is locked in a battle with those who seek to achieve the benefits of a more open exchange of information by utilizing “open access” publishing strategies.

February 24, 2004
Guide to Business Planning for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access, Second Edition
SPARC Consulting Group for the Open Society Institute. [Also in PDF]

February 1, 2004
Publishing Open Access Journals
Public Library of Science

January 24, 2004
When a Society Journal Changes Publisher

January 24, 2004
Open Access

September 24, 2003
Getting Your Journal Indexed
To be recognized as an authoritative, high-quality source of information, a journal must be widely available. Indexing and abstracting services facilitate the broadest dissemination of information by pointing researchers to articles that are relevant to the field.

July 1, 2003
Model Business Plan: A Supplemental Guide for Open Access Journal Developers & Publishers, First Edition
SPARC Consulting Group for the Open Society Institute. [Also in PDF]

July 1, 2003
Guide to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal, Second Edition
SPARC Consulting Group for the Open Society Institute. [Also in PDF]

November 8, 2002
SPARC Institutional Repository Checklist & Resource Guide
A practical guide and overview of the major issues institutions and consortia need to address in implementing an institutional repository.

August 24, 2002
The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper

Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant

Institutional repositories—digital collections that capture and preserve the intellectual output of university communities—respond to two strategic issues facing academic institutions: 1) they provide a central component in reforming scholarly communication by stimulating innovation in a disaggregated publishing structure; and 2) they serve as tangible indicators of an institution’s quality, thus increasing its visibility, prestige, and public value. This paper examines institutional repositories from these complementary perspectives, describing their potential role and exploring their impact on major stakeholders in the scholarly communication process.
See also: SPARC Institutional Repository Checklist & Resource Guide

April 24, 2002
Gaining Independence: A Manual for Planning the Launch of a Nonprofit Electronic Publishing Venture

Howard Goldstein, SPARC Consulting Group

An online manual to help nonprofit and independent organizations plan the launch of a scholarly communications project.

January 24, 2002
Capitalizing on Competition: The Economic Underpinnings of SPARC

Mary M. Case, Fmr Director, Office of Scholarly Communication, Association of Research Libraries

Over the last 15 years the library community has been faced with high and ever rising prices for scholarly resources. A number of factors have contributed to this situation, most fundamentally, the commercialization of scholarly publishing. While libraries have tried a number of strategies to ameliorate the effects of high prices, the development of SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, finally seems to be having some positive effects. This paper will review the current library environment, outline the elements that contribute to the marketplace for science, technology, and medical publishing, and then briefly discuss the various calls for more competition in the scholarly publishing market. I will then discuss SPARC, a major initiative intended to introduce low-priced, high-value alternatives to compete with high-priced commercial publications for authors and subscribers.