To view our complete collection of webinar recordings, visit our YouTube channel.
Want to stay in the loop? SPARC members can sign up for our mailing list to receive updates about upcoming webinars and events.
Understanding NSF’s PAPPG Update Webcast
February 2026 | Link to Recording
On February 2nd, SPARC hosted a webcast in collaboration with Authors Alliance to walk through the changes to NSF’s Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that includes new public access requirements and answer questions that libraries and faculty may have.
Paying Twice to Learn: Digital Textbooks, Courseware, and Student Data Privacy Webcast
December 2025 | Link to Recording
As SPARC’s Navigating Risk in Vendor Data Privacy Practices reports have documented, user tracking that would be unthinkable in a physical library setting now happens routinely through publisher platforms. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) has completed a similar analysis of widely adopted digital textbooks and courseware systems, finding gaps in data privacy for these tools that could leave students vulnerable.
This SPARC webcast features Meghan Land and Ariel Fox Johnson, the authors of PRC’s Paying Twice to Learn report, and equips participants with a better understanding of an important set of on-campus privacy risks.
PIDs 101 Webcast
November 2025 | Link to Recording
This PIDs 101 webcast provides a broad introduction to persistent identifiers (PIDs), including community definitions, commonly used persistent identifiers, and examples of how PIDs are used to develop more open systems of research. We discuss the benefits that can be realized by using persistent identifiers throughout the research lifecycle and how PIDs can contribute to developing new pathways for scientific communication.
2025 ACRL/SPARC Forum: Library Leadership in Navigating Public Access Funder Mandates
October 2025 | Link to Recording
As stronger public access policies from government funders come online, libraries are actively working to support their campuses in understanding and complying with the requirements of each.
This year’s ACRL/SPARC Forum highlights examples of what this support can look like across different types of institutions and institutional contexts. Recognizing the breadth of experience in this area across our community, participants were invited to share their own experiences and ask questions of the panelists and audience.
Panelists include:
– Jennifer Beamer, California State University San Bernardino Library
– Carrie Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries
– Mark Swartz, Queen’s University Library
– Mira Waller, University of Virginia Library
IMLS and DOE Policy Overview & FAQ Webcast
October 2025 | Link to Recording
On October 1st, SPARC and Authors Alliance co-hosted a webcast providing an overview of the IMLS publication and data sharing policies and the Department of Energy’s data sharing policy. This event provided an overview of key elements of these agencies’ policies.
Open Education 101 Session 4: FAQs: Answering Common Questions about Open Education
September 2025 | Link to Recording
Featured Guest Speakers: Will Cross, Director, Open Knowledge Center & Head of Information Policy, NC State and Brad Griffith, Senior Director of Academic Pathways & Innovation, Colorado Department of Higher Education.
This session takes on the real-world questions that come up when open education is introduced on campus. Where do I find OER? How do I know if it’s high quality? We address these and other practical concerns raised by faculty, students, and administrators, including those submitted by participants in earlier sessions. Participants received effective answers to common questions, evidence to back it up, and advocacy tips to apply in their own context.
Open Education 101 Session 3: Open Education in the Current Moment
September 2025 | Link to Recording
Featured Guest Speakers: Will Cross, Director, Open Knowledge Center & Head of Information Policy, NC State and Brad Griffith, Senior Director of Academic Pathways & Innovation, Colorado Department of Higher Education.
This session explored how open education intersects with major trends shaping higher education today. Topics include shifts in course material billing models (e.g., “Inclusive Access”), the rise of artificial intelligence, and growing areas such as microcredentials and workforce readiness. Participants left with ideas for situating open education within these broader conversations and advancing it more strategically on campus.
Open Education 101 Session 2: Open Education in Practice
August 2025 | Link to Recording
Featured Guest Speaker: Amy Hofer, Statewide Open Education Program Director, Open Oregon
This session introduces key aspects of putting open education into practice. Topics include how to find, create, and adapt open educational resources (OER), the foundations of open pedagogy, and how various colleges and universities are supporting open education through campus programs. Participants will left with practical examples and starting points to apply in their own teaching, library work, or institutional setting.
Open Education 101 Session 1: Open Education Foundations
August 2025 | Link to Recording
This session provides a broad introduction to open education, including its core principles, key terms, and historical development. We discuss how open education connects to related movements such as open access and open science, and highlight its potential to remove barriers and expand opportunities for both students and educators. Participants left with a strong foundational understanding to support further learning, along with awareness of key tools and resources.
Federal Agency Data Sharing Policy Overview & FAQ
August 2025 | Link to Recording
On August 20, Authors Alliance and SPARC hosted a webcast providing an overview of key elements of agency data sharing requirements.
Federal Agency Publication Policy Overview & FAQ
August 2025 | Link to Recording
In response to the 2022 Nelson Memo, federal agencies are required to update their public access policies by the end of this year. New policies are now in effect for several agencies: the NIH, CDC, AHRQ, DOE, and NASA. On August 5, Authors Alliance and SPARC hosted a webcast focusing on new publications sharing requirements, providing an overview of key elements of these policies, highlighting the differences between them, and answering participants’ questions.
OA 101: Who Owns Scholarly Work? Copyright and Open Access
June 2025 | Link to Recording
Speaker: Dave Hansen, Executive Director, Author’s Alliance
Who owns the copyright in scholarly work has been one of the most confusing, yet most important, legal questions in the move toward open access. While the answer might seem like it should be obvious (“authors!”), the reality is that layers of university copyright policies, copyright’s “work for hire” doctrine, publisher copyright transfer agreements, and funder licensing requirements make this a complex issue.
This session addresses how these different layers of rights, copyright transfers, and licenses affect the ability of authors and their institutions to make their works available openly as well as emerging issues such as AI usage of scholarly works and how open licensing and copyright can support or inhibit those uses.
SPARC Webcast: OA, Attribution, and Addressing Faculty AI Concerns
May 2025 | Link to Recording
As AI adoption accelerates, authors have growing concerns over maintaining control of their own work that may reduce their willingness to share their research openly. Publisher licensing deals with AI companies and instances of these same companies using scholarly content without permission have raised serious questions over consent and the potential exploitation of academic works. This has prompted some authors to reconsider how they share their publications and whether to license them openly. Attribution requirements—a fundamental element of open access and open licenses—provide both a way for authors to retain credit for their contributions and a mechanism for addressing faculty concerns.
On May 29, 2025, SPARC held a conversation on how attribution can better align AI tool development with both authors’ interests and the public good. The discussion touched on the need for mechanisms integrating more accurate citations into AI tools, the ways this would positively impact authors, and implications for authors when considering whether to make their work openly available.
The webcast featured a brief presentation by Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar (Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University) of their publication, “AI Search Has A Citation Problem,” followed by a facilitated discussion with Dave Hansen (Authors Alliance), and Peter Suber (Harvard University).
OA 101: Problematizing “Predatory” Publishing
May 2025 | Link to Recording
Speakers: Matt Ruen, Head of Collections and Digital Scholarship, Grand Valley State University; Teresa Schultz, Scholarly Communication and Social Sciences Librarian, University of Nevada Reno
“Predatory” publishing, which generally refers to a set of practices in academic publishing aimed at deception for financial gain at the expense of rigor, remains a hot topic among researchers and scholarly communication specialists. There are disagreements on how to define it and to whom and what it applies. This session explores a variety of publishing practices that could be considered predatory – including ones that are applicable to well established subscription publishers and journals – and problems with lists that claim to make clear-cut decisions on “good” and “bad” journals. Finally, we’ll discuss how librarians can help researchers evaluate scholarly journals based on their needs.
OA 101: Open Access, Visibility, and Research Impact – An Introduction
April 2025 | Link to Recording
Speaker: Rachel Borchardt, Scholarly Communication Librarian, American University
There are many visibility and impact benefits associated with publishing open access research, but researchers do not always prioritize open access when disseminating research. However, visibility and impact are vital to researchers, as well as grant funders and research institutions. In this webinar, we’ll discuss the relationships between open access and impact, starting with traditional scholarly impact metrics and moving into other types of impact, as well as the current landscape of research promotion and visibility. Aligning open access advocacy with researcher incentives as well as recent impact initiatives and movements will also be discussed.