feb06b.indd


scholarly
communication


Heather Joseph 

The
Scholarly
Publishing
and


Academic
Resources
Coalition


An
evolving
agenda



When I stepped into the role of SPARC director in July 2005, I thought I was 
reasonably familiar with this dynamic, ac­
tion­oriented organization. From my van­
tage point in helping to launch and to lead 
BioOne—a collaborative publishing venture 
that was among the first projects founded by 
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Acad­
mic Resources Coalition)—I thought I was 
well versed in SPARC’s founding principles 
and proactive agenda. But as the realities 
of leading our day­to­day activities have 
become clear, I have been reminded time 
and again of the challenges inherent in the 
unique role that SPARC plays—identifying 
opportunities to effect positive change in the 
scholarly communication system and creat­
ing and supporting programs that advance 
those changes. 

SPARC is, first and foremost, a strategic 
organization, and its agenda and programs 
have therefore evolved over its lifetime. 
In this article, I will sketch SPARC’s past 
accomplishments, outline ways that the or­
ganization has evolved, and share a sense 
of the direction SPARC will move in during 
the coming year. 

SPARC’S mission 
SPARC was created by the Association of Re­
search Libraries in 1998, to serve as a catalyst 
for action and to reduce barriers to the ac­
cess and use of information. As an alliance of 
more than 200 academic and research librar­
ies, SPARC’s mission is to correct imbalances 
in the scholarly publishing system that have 
driven up the cost of scholarly journals and 
diminished the community’s ability to access 

information. At the core of our mission is 
the belief that these imbalances inhibit the 
advancement of scholarship and are at odds 
with fundamental needs of scholars and the 
academic enterprise. 

Since 2002, SPARC’s highest priority 
and most visible activity has centered on 
advancing the goal of open access to schol­
arly literature, and this will continue to be 
our main focus. We do, however, recognize 
that change will play out differently in 
individual disciplines of scholarship, and 
that, in some areas, the interests of the 
community may be best served in the near 
term by affordable subscription­supported 
publishing solutions. Our programs are 
designed to build a broader understand­
ing of the opportunities for change as we 
move steadily towards a more open system 
of scholarship. 

To achieve its mission, SPARC’s activities 
center around three program areas: edu­
cating stakeholders on issues in scholarly 
communication, advocating policy changes 
that support the potential of digital systems 
to advance scholarly communication, and 
incubating market­based initiatives that 
demonstrate business and publishing models 
that advance changes benefi tting scholarship 
and the academy. 

SPARC has an admirable track record in 
identifying opportunities to effect change 
in each of its program areas. Rick Johnson, 
SPARC’s founding director, set a wonderful 

Heather Joseph is executive director of SPARC, e-mail: 
heather@arl.org 
© 2006 Heather Joseph 

C&RL News February 2006  84 

mailto:heather@arl.org


example of ways that SPARC can deploy 
programs in each of these areas, strategically 
and in concert with one another. 

Education 
SPARC’s educational activities have served 
to build a foundation for each strategic 
direction that SPARC has pursued. We have 
created effective campaigns designed to 
enhance scholars’ awareness of issues in 
scholarly communication, and to encourage 
and support their active participation in the 
scholarly communication process. 

The “Create Change” and “Declaring In­
dependence” campaigns have been effective 
tools in helping to raise awareness among 
librarians and authors about the conse­
quences of decisions over which they have 
direct, day­to­day control: what journals to 
submit articles to, review articles for, edit, 
and subscribe to. They have served as a call 
for scholars to act to increase competition 
in the marketplace and to introduce new 
publishing venues driven by scholars, not 
by commercial entities. 

SPARC’s campaign promoting awareness 
and adoption of open access has been, and 
will continue to be, the most visible of our 
educational projects. In addition to using 
traditional print channels, SPARC supports a 
series of rich Web­based resources articulat­
ing the benefits of open access. The “SPARC 
Open Access Newsletter” and the “Open 
Access News Blog,” both created and edited 
by Peter Suber, are vibrant channels that pro­
vide information on open access activities 
worldwide. Updates appear in the blog on 
a daily basis, and these are supplemented 
by Suber’s thoughtful and thorough analyses 
in the monthly newsletter. 

SPARC’s Whitepaper Series has also 
played an important role in introducing new 
ideas into academic and publishing circles. 
In particular, “The Case for Institutional 
Repositories” contributed to an entirely 
new way for the community to consider 
the long­term possibilities for access and ar­
chiving of their intellectual assets. This kind 
of educational outreach, speaking directly 

to individual scholars, will continue to be 
crucial to effecting change in the market­
place and in the scholarly communication 
process overall. 

Incubation 
I have long admired SPARC because it does 
more than just pay lip service to the impor­
tance of increasing competition in scholarly 
communication. Through its active incuba­
tion program, SPARC supports a unique and 
active program helping to create and support 
sustainable alternative publishing ventures. 
SPARC’s activities have evolved dramati­
cally in this arena, starting with an early 
program designed to introduce reasonably 
priced electronic journals as alternatives to 
expensive titles. 

This approach grew into an effort to or­
ganize much larger, multipublisher ventures, 
such as Project Euclid, Columbia Earthscape, 
and, of course, BioOne. SPARC has also 
partnered with institutions to support de­
velopments in the Institutional Repositories 
arena, such as the California Digital Library’s 
“eScholarship” program. These programs 
highlight SPARC’s commitment to working 
collaboratively with the community on con­
crete projects that demonstrate the viability 
of alternative publishing programs. 

As an offshoot of our experience in as­
sisting in the start­up of a large number 
of alternative ventures, SPARC also runs a 
consulting service. It has provided business 
and strategic planning services to dozens of 
nonprofit publishers, concentrating on the 
central goal of designing viable, fi nancially 
sustainable alternatives. 

Advocacy 
SPARC’s advocacy program has risen to 
the forefront of our activities. Initially the 
program focused on outreach targeted at 
stakeholder groups internal to the scholarly 
communication faculty and editorial boards 
along with communications and public rela­
tions activities. During the past two years, 
however, it has been greatly expanded to 
include an extremely active public policy 

February 2006  85 C&RL News 



focus. SPARC has gained national and inter­
national attention with its active advocacy 
work for open access. SPARC has been 
outspoken in support of policies related to 
public access to federally funded research 
results, in particular on the recently imple­
mented NIH Public Access Policy. 

The focus on public access to federally 
funded research led SPARC to spearhead 
the formation of the Alliance for Taxpayer 
Access, a unique alliance of leading library 
groups, public interest organizations, 
and patient advocacy groups. This group 
quickly coalesced and developed a pow­
erful voice in the open access movement, 
and is a good example of SPARC’s ability 
to identify opportunities to spearhead col­
laborative action. 

SPARC’s highly visible support for poli­
cies that support open access have helped 
to contribute to a growing sense that change 
in the scholarly communication system is 
required, and that a more open system will 
have benefits that can be realized far beyond 
the academic community. 

Future challenges and directions 
SPARC’s greatest opportunities will depend 
on our ability to effectively combine a 
focused, highly visible public advocacy 
campaign on open access with concrete, 
market­based activities that support the 
kind of changes that a successful campaign 
are likely to bring. 

The challenge is to find ways to keep 
the development of SPARC’s three strategic 
areas driving in complementary direc­
tions. The combination of our efforts in 
education, advocacy, and incubation has 
the potential to help us effect the greatest 
change. 

SPARC will also continue to listen 
closely and respond to concerns coming 
from our membership and the scholarly 
communication community as a whole. 
I often hear the concern that as SPARC 
actively advocates for public access to 
federally funded research, the small, so­
ciety publishers (who have traditionally 

been “good citizen” players) may be left 
in a vulnerable position. SPARC is uniquely 
positioned to leverage its education and 
outreach programs to focus on identifying 
and implementing market­based initiatives 
that can help create the kind of market 
conditions in which scholarly society (and 
other nonprofit publishing organizations) 
can continue to play a vital role. 

As SPARC moves forward, we will work 
to address these vulnerabilities. At the mo­
ment, we’re developing a discussion paper 
on the concept of applying the economic 
principles of cooperatives to the publishing 
arena. The notion of publishing coopera­
tives is agnostic to what particular change 
is driving the marketplace, and focuses 
on directly addressing the vulnerabilities 
of independent players to help build a 
foundation that can leverage a strength­
in­numbers approach. 

It’s also very important that SPARC iden­
tify initiatives that reflect an understanding 
of the full life cycle of scholarly com­
munication—programs that center on the 
end­to­end work of scholars. Ultimately, 
we can help support projects that directly 
address the ways scholars conduct their 
work, and that integrate mechanisms and 
standards to facilitate the open conduct of 
scholarship into the workflow of scholars. 
SPARC will actively seek to back initiatives 
that explicitly recognize that dissemination 
is an essential, inseparable component of 
the scientific research process and that ad­
dress questions of access to data as well as 
to the primary literature. 

While the issue of journal pricing 
was the wake­up call that brought many 
SPARC supporters to the table, it is vitally 
important for us to try to understand the 
broader context in which these pricing 
trends are occurring, as well as the wider 
consequences. By understanding that 
adjustments are needed at a system­wide 
level, we at SPARC, and those that believe 
in SPARC’s mission, can focus our energy 
on the long­term goal of contributing to a 
more open system of scholarship. 

C&RL News February 2006  86