SPARC and ACRL release materials on the progress of open access journal publishing

SPARC and ACRL release materials on the progress of open access journal
publishing

CHICAGO -  The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
(SPARC) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL),
have released interviews and analysis exploring in depth the views of
three major open access publishers on the challenges of sustainability.
The materials were produced in conjunction with the 15th SPARC-ACRL
Forum on Emerging Issues in Scholarly Communication, which took place on
June 23, 2007.

The Forum, which is held at every meeting of the American Library
Association, offered participants the opportunity to engage in
conversation with top executives from the three organizations. Speakers
included Mark Patterson, director of publishing for the Public Library
of Science; Bryan Vickery, deputy publisher for BioMed Central and
Editorial Director for Chemistry Central; and Paul Peters, director of
business development for Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Alma Swan of
Key Perspectives Ltd., moderated the session. Podcasts and slides from
the event are now available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala07.


The new materials offer a deeper level of insight into the three
publishers' business models and include:
 ● Interviews (in podcast and written formats) with each executive
exploring each organization's approach in detail.
 ● A matrix comparison of the publishers' views on 11 aspects of
maintaining their operations, including: the financial viability of the
company; the basis for charging publication fees; new and traditional
impact factors; and the role of institutional memberships in the
business model.

These tools for campus outreach were produced for SPARC and ACRL by
Alma Swan of Key Perspectives Ltd. and may be downloaded through
http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala07 .

For more information, visit the SPARC Web site at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/forum or the ACRL Web site at
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommunication.cfm.


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SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with
SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than
800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system
of scholarly communication. SPARC's advocacy, educational and
publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of
research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

ACRL
ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA),
representing more than 13,500 academic and research librarians and
interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership
organization in North America that develops programs, products and
services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians.
Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the
role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research
environments.