As a membership organization, SPARC works hard to support our members’ ability to effectively address pressing challenges in the areas where we have the most expertise. In close collaboration with our member libraries, we’ve made significant progress over this past year in the areas where SPARC is uniquely positioned to have an impact, including:
Driving Policy Change
- Continuing extensive engagement and consultation coordination efforts to ensure effective implementation of the landmark OSTP Nelson Memorandum ensuring open access to $90 billion in federally funded research outputs.
- Securing $7 million in federal funding for the U.S. Open Textbook Pilot grant program in FY2024 – bringing the total appropriations for this program to $54 million with an additional $9 million proposed for FY2025.
- Analyzing proposed AI-related regulations and legislation relevant to our members.
- Partnering with Creative Commons and EIFL to drive a global campaign to embed open access policies and practices into the global climate change community.
- Actively monitoring and engaging on OER-related bills in U.S. state legislatures, sharing information in SPARC’s State Policy Tracker.
- Building support in the U.S. federal rulemaking process to shift automatic textbook billing from opt-out to opt-in.
- Providing rapid response federal and state policy briefings to SPARC Members.
- Developing resources to help university leaders implement the OSTP Memo, including, “The Federal Purpose License: What Campuses Need to Know” fact sheet.
Equipping Members for Successful Publisher Negotiations
- Addressing information asymmetries by providing extensive resources (member briefings, a contracts library, guidance on data analysis for negotiation, a big deal cancellation tracker, and more) to support libraries in preparing for negotiations.
- Convening vendor-specific negotiation discussions for members to share strategies and learn from one another’s experiences.
- Supporting members in pushing back on vendor restrictions on the use of AI on licensed content.
- Publishing a growing set of Unbundling Profiles highlighting institutions’ experience leaving big deal journal packages.
- Contributing to the Open Negotiations Education for Academic Libraries (ONEAL) project to provide training on fundamental negotiation skills and supporting the launch of ONEAL’s Foundations Curriculum.
Promoting New Equitable Models for Research Communication
- Promoting non-APC business models, including Subscribe to Open (S2O), which is being adopted by an increasing number of scholarly publishers.
- Working with nonprofit publishers and libraries to demonstrate the potential of large-scale networks of linked Subscribe to Open offers.
- Facilitating nonprofit publisher assessment and adoption of non-APC open models.
- Sharing the results of the Open & Equitable Model Funding Program through the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) to make research grantmaking and communication more transparent, equitable, and inclusive.
- Facilitating the Open & Equitable Model Funding Seed Award Program for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to identify and remove barriers to open scholarship.
- Supporting “Gold Open Access 2019-2023: Articles in Journals,” the ninth in a series of SPARC-funded studies of business models supporting open access journals.
- Supporting the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Science (HELIOS Open) efforts on the “Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Guide: Buy, Build, or Partner” to support college and university leadership in making informed infrastructure decisions.
- Coordinating the U.S. Repository Network Discovery Pilot project to improve the discoverability of repositories, assess the levels of adoption in the U.S., and identify recommendations for data providers.
Centering Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity & Inclusivity
- Regularly examining and revising our operations, finances, communications, and strategies to center anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (REDI).
- Contributing to organizing the 2nd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access in Cape Town, including supporting travel for delegates from across Africa.
- Fully resourcing initiatives that promote REDI throughout the research communication system.
Realigning Research Incentives
- Partnering with the U.S. National Academies of Science to convene the “Roundtable on Realigning Research Incentives” to develop a new, action-oriented agenda to spur change in hiring, funding, research communication, and evaluation, including tenure and promotion.
- Working with philanthropies through the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG), to develop and implement open science language in their grantmaking policies and to encourage the open and equitable sharing of research.
- Expanding the impact of HELIOS Open, including hosting over 50 presidents, provosts, and vice presidents to explore ways to explicitly reward open scholarship.
Strengthen Privacy Protections & Addressing Platform Risks
- Publishing detailed vendor privacy reports, focused on ScienceDirect and SpringerLink, documenting practices that undermine library privacy standards and suggesting responses.
- Launching a pilot data privacy addendum to enhance relevant contractual protections.
- Convening working groups to support libraries in raising awareness about emerging privacy concerns and addressing these concerns through vendor negotiations.
- Organizing community groups to better integrate emerging issue areas, such as antitrust, privacy, and AI, into work advancing knowledge sharing.
Empowering Librarians Through Online Resources & Professional Development
- Cultivating communities of practice across key areas of focus for our members, including Negotiations, Privacy & Surveillance, and the U.S. Repository Network (USRN).
- Hosting the Open Access 101 Webinar Series, providing an entry point to open access work in libraries as well as a refresher for those already doing this work.
- Providing member-only programming, including current topical issues, member-only meetings, and rapid response national policy briefings.
- Expanding resources on “Equitable Access” with the Inclusive Access contract library and our joint initiative InclusiveAccess.org, which offers more than two dozen presentations, workshops, and webinars to raise awareness of the downsides of automatic textbook billing.
- Developing a new Foundations in Advocacy Program designed to offer practical, hands-on training on how to think like an advocate, including how to frame problems, set goals, develop strategies, and pitch solutions to decision-makers.
- Creating opportunities for libraries to promote openness by organizing International Open Access Week around the theme “Community over Commercialization.”
- Serving as organizer of the 2024 Open Education Conference under the event’s community-elected board.