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:

– 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 - benchmarkingfaculty driven

journalsstudent

journalsjournals for external publishing partners TOTAL

Cornell 3 1 69 73California Digital Library 28 31 0 59Columbia 14 15 19 48Toronto 25 15 0 40

Pitt1 10 10 14 34Alberta 24 6 0 30Western U 10 10 2 22Va Tec 9 1 6 16Indiana U 14 2 0 16Kansas 15 1 0 16Brigham Young 9 3 3 15U British Columbia 7 8 0 15Purdue 11 3 0 14Arizona 5 3 5 13U Mass, Amherst 7 1 5 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, 2013http://www.librarypublishing.org/resources/directory-library-publishing-services

SPARC Open Access MeetingKansas City, MO March 3-4, 2014

Library Publishing ForumKansas 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 activitiesPresented 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 LibraryPublishing 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/highlight-from-lpforum

https://storify.com/parnopaeus/sparc2014-twitter-highlights

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– 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 . . .