Welcome to SPARC® Europe, the alliance of European research libraries, library organizations, and research institutions. We advocate change in the scholarly communications market, support competition, and encourage new publishing models (in particular, open access models) that better serve the international researcher community.

Several national organizations and institutions in Europe sponsor SPARC Europe, including: the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK; the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) of the UK and Ireland; and UKB, the Netherlands Cooperative of Research Libraries, in collaboration with IWI, the SURF Foundation program for innovation in scientific information supply. LIBER also participates in SPARC Europe.

SPARC Europe collaborates with the international SPARC organization based in Washington, DC, but it develops Europe-focused initiatives under the direction of a Board of Directors and the SPARC Europe Director. Membership of SPARC Europe is open to national and academic libraries, library organizations and research institutions in the region.

In these pages you will find more information on SPARC Europe (on the 'about us' page), together with details of the initiatives and programmes we support ('resources'). SPARC Europe is a member organization and we encourage you to contact us with suggestions and comments on how to accelerate change in scholarly communications


David Prosser, Director
SPARC Europe
Bodleian Library
Broad Street
Oxford
OX1 3BG
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 1865 277 614
E-mail: david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk

 

What's New:

  • Another UK research funding body, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has issued a deposit mandate for all research papers resulting from AHRC fundings. Now 6 of the 7 UK Research Councils have mandates in place. (See the up-dated table describing the positions of each Research Council.) (07/10/07)

  • The SHERPA partnership is the recipient of the Second SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications. The Award was presented during OAI5 - the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, held at the CERN Laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.

    The decision to present the Award to SHERPA was made in recognition of their advocacy for the adoption of institutional repositories and their development of a suite of tools in support of Open Access, including OpenDOAR, JULIET, and RoMEO. You can find more details in the Press Release. (25/04/07)

  • Want to know where the nearest repository is? Try the Repository Map Mashup site put together by Stuart Lewis at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. It is in an early stage of development, but already gives a great visual representation of the spread of repositories. (03/04/07)

  • Two of the UK's research funding bodies (the CCLRC and the PPARC) have merged to form a new Research Council, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The STFC has adopted a deposit mandate for all research papers resulting from STFC funding. Now 5 of the 7 UK Research Councils have mandates in place. (See the up-dated table describing the positions of each Research Council.) (03/04/07)

  • The EC has published its Communication on Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access, Dissemination and Preservation. (Also available in French and German.) The highlights include the commitment to include publishing costs in research projects and €50 million for work on infrastructures, in particular digital repositories, in 2007-2008. The Communication stopped short of a deposit mandate, but did say that 'specific guidelines [will be] issued, within specific programmes, on the publication of articles in open repositories'. This takes the EC one step closer to mandating deposit. (20/02/07)

  • On Thursday 15 February a delegation led by Sijbolt Noord, on behalf of the European University Association, presented the 'Guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results' petition to Janez Potocnik, EU Commissioner for Science and Research. The petition had been singed by over 17,500 individuals and 743 intuitions and called on the EC to implement the recommendations of the "EU Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe". The petition is still open for additional signatures and now contains over 21,000 signatories. (20/02/07)

  • In the wake of the publication of the report from the "EU Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe" SPARC Europe, together with a consortium of partners, is sponsoring a petition to the European Commission to demonstrate support for Open Access and for the recommendations in the report. Signatures may be added on behalf of individuals or institutions. Please register your support for Open Access in this way. To sign the petition, please go to http://www.ec-petition.eu/

    In addition to SPARC Europe, the sponsoring organisations are JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK), SURF (Netherlands), DFG (Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany), DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek, Denmark).

  • A fifth UK Research Councils has issued a self-archiving mandate for all the research papers it funds. The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) has announced that for grants arising from proposals submitted after 1 December 2006 it will be a requirement of grant that copies of papers published as a result if those grants must be deposited in a suitable repository (where one exists and in compliance with publisher's copyright and licensing policies). This means that only two of the UK's eight research Councils have no policy supporting open access. (See the up-dated table describing the positions of each Research Council.) (30/10/06)
  • A fourth UK Research Councils has issued a self-archiving mandate for all the research papers it funds. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will require from 1 October 2006 that copies of peer-reviewed papers resulting from new funded awards be deposited at the earliest opportunity in an e-prints repository. NERC will establish an institutional repository for the work of its staff members and this repository will be available for authors whose institutions do not have their own repository. Now half of the UK Research Councils have strong self-archiving mandates in place. (See the up-dated table describing the positions of each Research Council.) (21/08/06)
  • Three of the Research Councils in the UK have issued self-archiving mandates for all the research papers they fund. This is part of a long-awaited policy on open access from Research Councils UK (RCUK), the umbrella group for the eight Research Councils, and represents the first Government funding bodies worldwide to impose such mandates. SPARC Europe welcomes the statements and encourages other funding bodies to follow this lead. (SPARC Europe has produced a table to show the positions of each Research Council.) (11/07/06)
  • The European Commission has published a “Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe,” a comprehensive and independent review of the scholarly publishing market. (See http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf). The report provides insights into how and why the current system fails to meet the needs of researchers and points the way, through a series of recommendations, to addressing many aspects of a dysfunctional market. SPARC Europe has strongly endorsed the key conclusion that “policies should make sure that the market is sufficiently competitive and ‘dissemination-friendly.'" (11/07/06)
  • The SPARC Create Change website has been comprehenively up-dated to provide information, perspectives, and tools to enable researchers to play an active role in advancing scholarly information exchange in the networked environment. (29/06/06)
  • The SPARC Europe office has moved into one of Oxford’s most distinctive buildings – the Clarendon Building. The Clarendon is part of the Bodleian library (who generously provides office space for SPARC Europe) and was built in the early 18th Century by architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (most famous for his churches built in London following the great fire). It has just had a major refurbishment and now houses the Oxford University Library System administration. The address is given above. (02/05/06)
  • The Wellcome Trust is the recipient of the first SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications. The Award was presented during the conference dinner of the Third Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication held in Lund, Sweden.

    The decision to present the Award to the Wellcome Trust was made in recognition of the Trust’s truly groundbreaking work in scholarly communication, from the commissioning of incisive research into the market, through to the formulation and implementation of clear policy in support of the widest dissemination of the research outputs funded by the Trust. You can find more details in the Press Release. (24/04/06)

  • The Institutional Repository, a new book by Richard Jones, Theo Andrew and John MacColl has just been published. It draws on the authors' experiences of setting-up and running the repository at Edinburgh University. (18/01/06)
  • Research Councils UK has published its draft policy on access to research outputs. The policy would promote open access by making it a condition of grant that researchers deposit copies of their journal articles and conference proceedings (subject to copyright restrictions) in suitable open repositories. The Research Councils will also make funds available to pay for open access publication charges. SPARC Europe has strongly welcomed the policy. (14/07/05)
  • The creation of a Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) has been announced. DOAR will provide a comprehensive and authoritative list of institutional and subject-based repositories, as well as archives set up by funding agencies. Users of the service will be able to analyse repositories by location, type, the material they hold and other measures. The DOAR is a joint collaboration between the University of Nottingham in the UK and the University of Lund in Sweden and is funded by the Open Society Institute (OSI), along with the JISC, CURL, and SPARC Europe.(14/02/05)
  • The exchange on open access between the UK Government and the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee continues. Following the publication of the Committee's original report, the Government made a formal response in which it dismissed the 'author pays' model and refused to provide extra funding for institutional repositories saying that this was the responsibility of individual institutions. The Committee was not satisfied with the response and requested further thought from the Government. A second response has been published, basically restating the Government's position. With a UK General Election likely in May 2005, it would appear that the political debate on open access in the UK is temporarily on hold. (26/01/05)
  • The Wellcome Trust has issued a Position Statement in Support of Open Access Publishing. Specifically, the 'Wellcome Trust ....supports open and unrestricted access to the published output of research, including the open access model...., as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.' (11/04)

 

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Last updated: 3 April 2007

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