Our Mission

Sharing knowledge is a human right. SPARC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that supports systems for research and education that enable everyone, everywhere to access, contribute to and benefit from the knowledge that shapes our world. We consider openness a critical enabling strategy for achieving such systems.

Our Objectives

SPARC is a catalyst for action. Our pragmatic agenda focuses on driving policy change, supporting member action, and cultivating communities that advance our vision of knowledge as a public good. To promote progress towards our vision, SPARC:

1. Advocates for policies that enable open, equitable systems of research and education. 
2. Educates community members on opportunities to take action to enable such systems.
3. Incubates projects that promote new models that directly support such systems. 

SPARC is committed to cultivating healthy communities, and places a premium on actively supporting the people doing the day-to-day work of opening up research and education. We work to ensure that our own internal operations and activities reflect our community’s values, and regularly review our practices and structures and make adjustments to ensure alignment.

Our Strategic Priority Areas

This year, we’ll work to accelerate the significant momentum we have built with our members, concentrating our activities in the following strategic areas:

Policy & Advocacy

SPARC will play a leadership role in securing and supporting policies that advance openness and equity in research and education systems. Specific actions will include:

• Advocating for policies that ensure immediate free access to and full reuse of publicly funded research outputs in the U.S. and Canada.
• Advocating for policies and practices that improve the discoverability and utility of research outputs.
• Supporting effective implementation of key regulations and guidance, including federal agency Public Access Policies.
• Promoting author rights via educational resources and advocacy campaigns.
• Advocating for policies that support open education, including continued funding for the U.S. Open Textbook Pilot and limits to automatic textbook billing.
• Advocating for policies that contribute to an AI ecosystem aligned with SPARC’s values.
• Educating policymakers and regulators on the privacy and competition risks posed by data analytics-driven platform businesses.
• Ensuring that SPARC members are kept fully informed on key policy areas and are equipped with resources to take action as needed.

SPARC will also continue to play an active role in supporting allies in shared areas of concern including library digital ownership, academic freedom, and internet freedom issues.

Realigning Incentives

SPARC will equip high-level decision makers to incentivize the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials at critical decision points. Specific actions will include:

• Educating the community on the misaligned incentives fueled by journal and university rankings, research analytics products, and citation databases.
• Advancing individual and collective action on college and university campuses through the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS Open).
• Promoting practices and policies that support open sharing of research outputs among private funders by convening the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG).
• Operationalizing the work of the NASEM Roundtable of Aligning Incentives by supporting new NASEM Action Collaboratives.
• Exploring strategies for evolving university accreditation processes to account for the shift toward open research and libraries’ role in scholarly communication.

Enabling Systems That Advance Knowledge Sharing

SPARC will advance systems that promote open knowledge sharing through targeted work on open business models, content and infrastructure, as well as community development. Specific actions will include:

• Encouraging the adoption of open business models that align with SPARC’s values and that serve the interests of researchers and the public.
• Supporting libraries in adopting models for open access agreements that align with their best interests and navigating pressure to adopt models adverse to those interests.
• Supporting community-led, non-commercial open access models (including Diamond OA, S2O and other non-APC alternatives).
• Advancing institutional repositories as critical infrastructure via the USRN.
• Advancing strategic coordination and growth of the open education field via support of the Open Education Association and the Open Education Conference
• Supporting libraries in improving their negotiating power with vendors, generating cost savings, and better aligning fiscal commitments with values through our Negotiations Community of Practice and activities such as vendor-specific negotiation discussions.
• Supporting reinvestment in community-controlled research infrastructure.
• Providing members to up-to-date analyses of academic publishing/analytics markets.
• Educating members on the risks posed by publishers’ transitioning into data analytics-driven platform businesses by convening a Privacy & Surveillance Community of Practice and producing timely analyses and resources.
• Providing resources to help institutions address issues in digital courseware contracts, including “Inclusive Access” programs.
• Strengthening the SPARC community by better connecting the people within it and building on OpenCon’s foundation to prioritize those early in their careers in this work.