Sparc

Paul Sheehan

Director of Library Services

Dublin City University

paul.sheehan@dcu.ie

LIR

25 February 2005

2

SPARC (USA)

An initiative of the Association of Research Libraries

Formed in 1997Why? Average journal prices increased 226%

1986-2001(5 X CPI) Now has over 200 institutional membersSPARC Europe 100+ members

3

Aims - Advocacy Widening the terms/community of debate New publishing strategies. Disaggregation/standards

Aims - Action Action - Competition Evolutionary Ecology ResearchPartnership - publishing partners I.e IEEE, CUP,

MIT press

SPARC (USA)

4

Action - open access alternatives to subscription

Open Access journals movement Institutional repository movement

SPARC (USA)

5

NIH Campaign

NIH single biggest funder of bioscience research in USA ($27b grants in 2005)

US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee recommended NIH to require papers be made freely available in PubMedCentral within 6 months of publication

SPARC then ran a campaign based on taxpayer access to information. Formed Alliance for Taxpayer Access

6

Publishers have since fought backLatest proposal: NIH to encourage authors to

lodge papers in PubMedCentral asap & within 12 months of publication

American Physiological Society has sought legal opinion on this

NIH Campaign

7

Other campaigns

White paper on Society journal publishing & involvement of research funders in this discussion

Anti-trust issues in scholarly and legal publishing . SPARC co-sponsor of symposium on this in Washington DC on February 11th 2005.

8

SPARC Europe

Set up in 2002 under the aegis of Liber, with financial support from JISC

Members not required to commit to journal support in same way as in USA

Membership exceeds 100. Predominantly northern Europe. Seeking to expand in southern/eastern Europe.

9

SPARC Europe - Roles

Advocacy/Explanation Presentations Submissions - HoC Science &Technology

Committee, EU investigation into scientific publication

Strategic Open Access IRs & OA journals

Information exchange

10

Institutional Repositories

Co-sponsor of Geneva workshops on Open Access

Establishing directory of Open Access Repositories. Collaboration between SHERPA and Lund

Furthering aims of Budapest Open Access initiative of which it is a signatory

11

Information exchange

Trade information - details of big dealsPolitical information - EU investigation into

scientific journalsAdvice: how best to lobby MEPs etc.Advice: how best to link with sympathetic

international organisations e.g. Open Society Institute.

12

Trends

Identifying terms of debate - what gets a hearing?

Advocacy now aimed more at funding bodiesSeeking an understanding with learned society

publishers

13

Continuing threats

Consolidating market share...Bundling/consortia dealsLicencing/IP issuesResidual rights, management software, user

interfaces.