SPARC and the Library
Publishing Coalition
Scholarly Communications Lunch and Learn Talk #10
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Office of Scholarly Communication & Publishing
University Library System
University of Pittsburgh
CC BY 3.0
What is SPARC?
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition http://www.sparc.arl.org
 A branch of ARL since 1997
 An international alliance of 800+ academic and
research libraries
– SPARC North America (~200; includes most ARLs)
– SPARC Europe
– SPARC Japan
SPARC mission
 advance open scholarly communication
– Open Access to research
– Open data
– Open educational resources
 works with stakeholders to:
– expand research dissemination
– reduce financial pressures on libraries
“SPARC believes that faster,
broader, and more open sharing
of the outputs of the scholarly
research process increases the
impact of research, fuels the
advancement of knowledge, and
increases the return on research
investments.”
SPARC’s Focus
 Educating stakeholders about the scholarly
communication system
 Advocating policy changes that highlight the use of
technology to advance schol comm & research
dissemination
 Incubating new business and publishing models that
encourage openness for the benefit of scholarship and
academe
SPARC Advocacy
Information and positions on current legislation and
policies at national, state, and campus levels
http://www.sparc.arl.org/advocacy
Also:
– Alliance for Taxpayer Access
 Patient groups, physicians, researchers, educational
institutions, publishers, health promotion organizations
– The Right to Research Coalition
 Student organizations
SPARC Resources
 Guidance on issues and best practices:
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–
–
–
–
–
OA Data Resource for Research Funders
SPARC Author Addendum
OA publishing funds
Open education speaker list
Primer on article-level metrics
Strategies for Sustaining Open Access
 Webcasts on hot topics in scholarly communication
 Educational materials:
– How Open Is It
– What’s New in Open Access
 News on OA & scholarly communication activities (not just
SPARC)
Library Publishing Coalition (LPC)
 Community of academic and research library
members in the US and Canada involved in
publishing
 The LPC is new: formed in 2012
 Pitt is in small core of founding members
 60 members today
 Includes university presses but only those with
administrative connection to library
LPC Mission and Vision
 promote development of innovative, sustainable
publishing services in research libraries to support
scholars
 advocate for library publishing services
 articulate the value of library publishing services for
faculty, students, and other stakeholders
 share information among members
 address training and education needs
LPC activities in planning
 Annual Library Publishing Forum ✔
 Directory of Library Publishing Services ✔
 Conducting new research
 Developing advocacy and awareness materials and
programs to articulate the value of library publishing.
 Providing training and learning opportunities
 Data collection to track trends, needs, and developments
 Explore collective purchasing arrangements
 Develop collective marketing strategies that build exposure
for library publishers.
Library Journal Publishing - benchmarking
faculty driven
journals
student
journals
journals for external
publishing partners
TOTAL
Cornell
California Digital Library
Columbia
Toronto
3
28
14
25
1
31
15
15
69
0
19
0
73
59
48
40
Pitt1
Alberta
Western U
Va Tec
Indiana U
Kansas
Brigham Young
U British Columbia
Purdue
Arizona
U Mass, Amherst
10
24
10
9
14
15
9
7
11
5
7
10
6
10
1
2
1
3
8
3
3
1
14
0
2
6
0
0
3
0
0
5
5
34
30
22
16
16
16
15
15
14
13
13
1. Does not include the (49) titles on ULS-hosted Scholarly Exchange service, since the ULS is not the
publisher of record for these titles.
Source: Library Publishing Directory, 2013
http://www.librarypublishing.org/resources/directory-library-publishing-services
SPARC Open Access Meeting
Kansas City, MO March 3-4, 2014
Library Publishing Forum
Kansas City, MO March 5-6, 2014
Tim’s presentation
Open Access publishing at Pitt: alignment with local
and global OA policies
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20684/
 Overview of our publishing program
 Importance of advocacy through national and
international groups
 How DOAJ and membership in OASPA helped shift
our policies toward more open access
Lauren’s activities
Presented on the Plum Analytics altmetrics
widget at the SPARC Innovation Session.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20656/
Presented a poster on the
ULS’s e-journal publishing
activities at the LPF
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20638/
(a few of) Lauren’s Highlights
 Erin McKiernan’s “Being Open as an Early Career
Researcher”
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.954994
Slide “What can I do?” by Erin McKiernan is licensed under CC-BY 3.0.
(a few of) Lauren’s Highlights
 Erin McKiernan’s “Being Open as an Early Career
Researcher”
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.954994
 Impromptu discussion on creating an “Open Access Pledge”
site for ECRs.
 The start of PKP’s online Library
Publishing course
 Enjoying the art at the Nelson-Atkins
Museum, just down the road from
the hotel:
(a few of) Lauren’s Highlights:
see the rest on Storify
https://storify.com/parnopaeus/sparc2014-twitterhighlights
https://storify.com/parnopaeus/highlight-fromlpforum
John’s activity

Presented on
Pennsylvania
Libraries: Research &
Practice
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/20662/

Discussed editorial
quality
for OA journals

Discussed PlumX and
altmetrics activities
John’s highlights - OER
 Open educational resources and open textbooks
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Hot topic!
Seems like a natural fit
Faculty create these items already
Directly addresses student costs in higher education
Shouldn’t interfere with tenure, publication prestige
John’s highlights - DORA
 San Francisco Declaration on Research
Assessment
 Initiated by American Society for Cell Biology,
editors, publishers (December 2012)
 “Improving the ways in which the outputs of
scientific research are evaluated”
 http://am.ascb.org/dora/
1 general recommendation
 “Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal
Impact Factors, as surrogate measures of the
quality of individual research articles, to assess an
individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring,
promotion, or funding decisions”
17 specific recommendations
 Organizations supplying metrics
– Provide access to data
 Publishers
– Don’t promote journals by Impact Factor
 Research institutions
– Scientific content of a paper, not the JIF, is what matters
 Researchers
– Change the culture!
 Funding agencies
– Consider value from all outputs and outcomes generated by
research
John’s highlights - Meeting others
 Kimberly Chapman, Repository Services Manager
at University of Arizona
 Adrian Ho, Director of Digital Scholarship,
University of Kentucky, and author of this article
 Gail McMillan, Director of Digital Research &
Scholarship Services, Virginia Tech
 Karen Meijer-Kline, Public Knowledge Project
Oh, and this . . .
 Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue, Kansas City, MO
 http://www.jackstackcatering.com/images/full/1a.jpg
Faculty to Liaison Librarian:
“Have you heard about some bill on public access to
science and technology research? I think it was
introduced by Mike Doyle, our U.S. Representative.
Should we really be spending more money on this? I
mean, most researchers in our field already have
access to research papers, right?”
Questions, comments . . .