1 SPARC: Partnering for a New Scholarly Communication System ACRL STS Program Chicago, IL July 10, 2000 Julia Blixrud SPARC Assistant Director, Public Programs SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING & ACADEMIC RESOURCES COALITION An initiative of the Association of Research Libraries

2 Current Economic Barriers ARL Trends ( ) Serials  Unit cost+207%  Expenditure+170%  Titles purchased -6% Monographs  Unit cost+65%  Expenditure+34%  Titles purchased -26% Consumer Price Index +52% ARL Trends ( ) Serials  Unit cost+207%  Expenditure+170%  Titles purchased -6% Monographs  Unit cost+65%  Expenditure+34%  Titles purchased -26% Consumer Price Index +52% 1998 Acquisitions Bertlesmann (6 total acquis) Springer-Verlag Reed Elsevier (5) Engineering Information JAI/Ablex Thomson (29) Wolters-Kluwer (11) Waverly Plenum Ovid Thomson Science 1998 Acquisitions Bertlesmann (6 total acquis) Springer-Verlag Reed Elsevier (5) Engineering Information JAI/Ablex Thomson (29) Wolters-Kluwer (11) Waverly Plenum Ovid Thomson Science

3 Factors that Contribute to Monopoly Marketplace Robust supply side Scarce good - inelastic market Library acquisitions practices Faculty expectations Disjunction between creator/user and fiscal agent Barriers to market entry

4 Past Library Strategies Journal cancellations & reduced monograph acquisitions. Improved document delivery models. Cooperative collection development. Site licensing of electronic information. Increased use of consortia to license electronic information

5 Competition as a Strategy “If 100 institutions would put up [US]$10,000 each to fund 10 start-up electronic journals that would compete head to head with the most expensive scientific and technical journals to which we subscribe, we would have [US]$1 million annually.... I don’t see any way around the reality that we have to put the money out in order to make this start to happen.” Ken Frazier, May 1997

6 Introducing SPARC Nearly 200 SPARC Members  Full Members ($5,000 dues; US$7500 annual purchase commitment)  Consortial Members (purchase commitment of 0.2% of aggregate materials budget)  Supporting Members (no purchase commitment)  International Supporting Member (no purchase commitment)  Affiliate (associations, societies, etc.) Leverage libraries’ buying power to support:  Lower-price alternatives to high-price journals  New models of dissemination that better serve authors, users & buyers

7 SPARC Strategies Reduce financial risk through subscription pledges and marketing support Work with prestigious societies and editorial boards Help raise faculty awareness of issues Draw authors & editors away from high- priced titles Help build capacity & scale within not- for-profit sector

8 Creating Competition Several thrusts:

9 SPARC Alternatives American Chemical Society SPARC’s first partner 3 journals over 3 years Organic Letters available now  Refereed print & electronic rapid communications journal  Editorial team includes 3 Nobel laureates  Projected 65-70% of content at one- quarter the price of competitor Next: Crystal Growth & Design (2001) More info: pubs.acs.org

10 The Impact of Competition

11 SPARC Alternatives www. evolutionary- ecology.com

12 SPARC Leading Edge New Journal of Physics Free on the Web Supported by article charges Broad, selective coverage Internet Journal of Chemistry Created by independent chemists Exploits Web as publishing medium New Journal of Physics

13 SPARC Scientific Communities BioOne Aggregation of journals from AIBS member societies Most of these journals now are in print-format only A way to go electronic without going commercial

14 SPARC Scientific Communities BioOne  Electronic access to high value journals from small societies  Keeps economical titles from being squeezed out or taken over  Offsets declining print circulation trends

15 SPARC Scientific Communities MIT CogNet California Digital Library eScholarship Columbia Earthscape

16 New Alternatives, New Partners Geoscience journal aggregation (GSA, EPIC, SPARC) EUCLID Electronic Theses and Dissertations Preprint Servers Open Archives Initiative

17 Creating Change  Shift control of scholarly publication back to scholars  Influence scholarly publishers to abide by friendly pricing policies  Create alternatives to commercial scholarly publications  Foster changes in faculty peer review system Sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, Association of College and Research Libraries, and SPARC with support from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

18 SPARC Success Measures SPARC supported projects are financially viable and significantly less expensive SPARC supported projects are attracting quality authors and editors New players have entered the STM marketplace in addition to SPARC partners An environment has been created where editorial boards are emboldened to take action STM journal price increases have moderated significantly

19 SPARC: Partnering for a New Scholarly Communication System Questions???