Latest Developments

SPARC Europe and DRIVER agree to closer collaboration

sparc — 2008-10-30T14:36:38Z

SPARC Europe and DRIVER to cooperation in order to progress and enhance the provision, visibility and application of European research outputs through digital repositories.

As part of the LIBER 37th Annual Conference held at the Koc University Suna Kirac Library, Istanbul, from 1 to 5 July 2008, SPARC Europe and DRIVER have agreed to work closely together on promoting repositories, signing a Memorandum of Agreement to take this collaboration forward.

SPARC Europe and DRIVER confirmed a need for cooperation in order to progress and enhance the provision, visibility and application of European research outputs through digital repositories, in systems providing access to texts, data or other types of content.

DRIVER is a joint initiative of European stakeholders, co-financed by the European Commission, setting up a technical infrastructure for digital repositories and facilitating the building of an umbrella organisation for digital repositories. DRIVER relies on research libraries for the sustainable operation of repositories and provision of high quality content through digital repositories. SPARC Europe and DRIVER share the vision that research institutions should contribute actively and cooperatively to a common, pan-European data and service infrastructure based on digital repositories.

In recent years, research libraries have been pressed to improve scholarly communication by establishing digital repositories to expose institutional research outputs to the world. Networks of individual repositories and overarching information services for aggregation, retrieval, share and re-use are being built on the basis of institutional national and regional location, or by subject areas.

Collaboration between SPARC Europe and DRIVER is framed by their joint support for an Open Access model for repositories in research institutions. They will present a common lobby at a national and international level to leverage change through the scholarly community within respective institutions and countries. Their reciprocal support will ensure wider access to standards for interoperability between repositories, and the adoption of emerging technical standards to facilitate open archiving. This agreement demonstrates their joint commitment to promote a European network of repositories offering access to research outputs across institutional and national boundaries

David Prosser, Director of SPARC Europe, said ‘Europe is well placed to take a leading role internationally in the development of institutional repositories. A combination of institutional interest, progressive polices from funding bodies, and strong support from the European Commission creates the perfect conditions to foster an open research environment. DRİVER is a key component in underpinning the European repository infrastructure and we are very pleased to cement our already close relationship by signing this agreement.

Norbert Lossau, Scientific Coordinator of DRIVER and Director of Goettingen State and University Library commented: “DRIVER has always been understood to provide a permanent infrastructure for digital repositories. To achieve the necessary outreach, this infrastructure needs to build on collaboration with all relevant stakeholders. Signing the Memorandum of Understanding with SPARC Europe, the central lobbying and support organization for Open Access in Europe, is a significant and welcome consequence of the collaboration agreement concluded with LIBER in August 2007.”

European Commission launches open access pilot

sparc — 2008-10-30T15:02:09Z

EC pilot to give OA to results from approximatley 20% of FP7 projects - especially in health, energy, environment, social sciences and information and communication technologies.

The European Commission has announced a pilot to provide OA to results from selected FP7 projects.

"Fast and reliable access to research results, especially via the Internet, can drive innovation, advance scientific discovery and support the development of a strong knowledge-based economy. The European Commission wants to ensure that the results of the research it funds under the EU's 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7) with more than € 50 billion from 2007 - 2013 are disseminated as widely and effectively as possible to guarantee maximum exploitation and impact in the world of researchers and beyond. The Commission today launched a pilot project that will give unrestricted online access to EU-funded research results, primarily research articles published in peer reviewed journals, after an embargo period of between 6 and 12 months. The pilot will cover around 20% of the FP7 programme budget in areas such as health, energy, environment, social sciences and information and communication technologies."

SPARC Europe strongly supports this project, but urges the Commssion to move further and faster.

Springer Purchase BioMedCentral

sparc — 2008-10-29T16:34:30Z

Springer has announced that it is to buy pioneering OA publisher BMC

Springer – the world’s second largest publisher of scholarly journals – has bought BioMedCentral. This raises many interesting questions, but shows that gold OA publishing is now seen as a viable and sustainable business model.

New Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) Launched

sparc — 2008-11-07T15:43:26Z

As part of Open Access Day the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA, announced its official launch on 14 October 2008. The mission of OASPA is to support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers globally trough an exchange of information, setting of industry standards, advancing business and publishing models, advocating for gold OA journals publishing, education and the promotion of innovation. OASPA has the strong support of SPARC Europe.

ANNOUNCING THE LAUNCH OF THE OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, OASPA

14 October 2008, London. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA, announces its official launch today in conjunction with an OA Day celebration hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London. The mission of OASPA is to support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines through an exchange of information, setting of industry standards, advancing business and publishing models, advocating for gold OA journals publishing, education and the promotion of innovation.

From having first emerged as a new publishing model over a decade ago, OA publishing has become an embedded feature of the scholarly publishing landscape: The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists over 3500 peer-reviewed journals; a growing number of professional organizations offer OA publications; university libraries increasingly support OA publishing services; funding organizations support and encourage OA publishing; and a long tail of independent editorial teams and societies now publish their titles OA. Professional OA publishers such as BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have been in business for over five years, while some scientist/scholar publishers (editorial teams operating independently of a professional publisher) have published their OA journals for a decade or more. Moreover, a number of traditional publishing houses are now engaging in Open Access activities, the recent acquisition of BioMed Central by Springer and the SAGE-Hindawi partnership being two cases in point. By bringing together those who share an interest in developing appropriate business models, tools and standards to support OA journals publishing, it is hoped that success in these areas can be achieved more quickly to the benefit of not only OASPA members, but more importantly, for the scholarly community that OA publishers serve.

Membership in OASPA is open to both scholar publishers and professional publishing organizations, including university presses and for profit and non-profit organizations. Members are expected to demonstrate a genuine interest in OA journals publishing by having signed either the Berlin or Budapest Declarations and must publish at least one full OA journal. Other individuals and organizations who support OA journals publishing or who are interested in exploring opportunities are also welcome. Membership criteria and an application form can be found on the OASPA website, www.oaspa.org.

The founding members of OASPA represent a broad spectrum of OA publishers and include: BioMed Central, Co-Action Publishing, Copernicus, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Journal of Medical Internet Research (Gunther Eysenbach), Medical Education Online (David Solomon), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), SAGE, SPARC Europe and Utrecht University Library (Igitur). Representatives from each of these publishers will form an interim board until a first General Meeting is held during 2009.

###

Open Access Scholarly Publishers’ Association, OASPA, is launched today 14 October 2008 in response to long-time informal discussions among Open Access publishers, and aims to represent the interests of OA journals publishers globally. For more information about the organization, visit the OASPA website at: www.oaspa.org.

The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.

Open Access (OA) scholarly publication refers to the dissemination of peer-reviewed manuscripts containing original research or scholarship immediately upon publication, at no charge to user groups, without requiring registration or other restrictions to access. OA publications also allow users to "copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...."

Final UK Research Council to Adopt Open Access Mandate

sparc — 2009-01-28T12:56:11Z

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) announces plan to adopt OA mandate

To date, six of the seven UK research funding bodies have adopted open access mandates. Now, the seventh, the EPSRC, has announced a plan to adopt an open access policy for all reseach that it funds. From their announcement:

'EPSRC Council agreed at its December [2008] meeting to mandate open access publication, but that academics should be able to choose whether they use the green option (ie, self-archiving in an on-line repository) or gold option (ie, pay-to-publish in an open access journal). Further details will be published in spring 2009.'

SPARC Europe has put together a summary of all of the Research Council polices

Welsh Repository Network (WRN) launch

sparc — 2009-03-18T10:28:46Z

Project to create a network of twelve repositories across Wales

The Welsh Repository Network, funded by JISC, will create a network of twelve repositories across Wales. Each higher education institution in Wales has been provided with the resources to purchase repository hardware or a hosted repository system along with support and assistance via the Repositories Support Project enabling them to operate effective institutional repositories.

This project helps to address the Welsh Assembly Government's Reaching Higher objectives in respect of improving institutional efficiency, increasing capacity and encouraging collaboration, but also helps to make a significant contribution to the overall aims and objectives of the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme.