[Fwd: [SPARC-FRIENDS] SPARC Partners with Public Library of Science]

["Olga Francois" <ofrancois@xxxxxxxx>]

FYI...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [SPARC-FRIENDS]  SPARC Partners with Public Library of Science
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:12:19 -0500

November 10, 2003

AND PLoS PARTNER TO ADVOCATE FOR

OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING

Collaboration Strengthens Global Effort to Make

Scientific and Medical Literature Freely Available

Washington, DC -- SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition), an academic and research libraries initiative,
today announced its partnership with the Public Library of Science
(PLoS; http://www.plos.org), the groundbreaking organization of
scientists and physicians committed to making scientific and medical
literature freely available on the public Internet. The alliance aims
to broaden support for open-access publishing among researchers,
funding agencies, societies, libraries, and academic institutions
through cooperative educational and advocacy activities.


PLoSs first journal, <italic>PLoS Biology</italic>, introduced in
October 2003, employs a new model for scientific publishing in which
peer-reviewed research articles are freely available to read and use
through the Internet. The costs of publication are recovered not from
subscription fees -- which limit information access and use -- but
from publication fees paid by authors out of their grant funds and
from other revenue sources. This effort has been the subject of recent
editorials and news articles in the <italic>New York Times, Washington
Post, </italic>the <italic>Guardian, Nature, Science</italic>,
National Public Radio, <italic>Business Week</italic>, the <italic>Los
Angeles Times</italic>, and many other U.S. and worldwide media
outlets. 


Both PLoS and SPARC recognize that open access speeds the progress of
science and medicine, which is of substantial public benefit, said
Vivian Siegel, Executive Director of PLoS. Working together, we hope
to demonstrate these benefits to scholarly publishing stakeholders on
campuses, in the lab, and at funding agencies. SPARC members can make
open access a reality by educating faculty about the benefits and
future of open access within their campus community and at conferences
they attend."


PLoS is a breakthrough initiative, said SPARC Director Rick Johnson.
It has brought enhanced credibility and a new public platform to open
access publishing. PLoS has shown that if stakeholders want open
access badly enough, old habits and systems can give way to new
opportunities. SPARC looks forward to working with PLoS toward
realignment of the way we pay for scholarly communication so that the
public benefits of open access can be broadly realized.


Backing for the new open-access author-fee publishing model is
growing, particularly in biomedical fields. Recently the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute (http://www.hhmi.org/) and the Wellcome Trust
(http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/1/awtvispolpub.html), major private
funders of biomedical research in the U.S. and U.K. respectively,
announced that they will earmark funds to pay open-access publication
fees as part of their grants. In addition, the recent conference on
Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities issued the
Berlin Declaration, which promotes the Internet as an instrument for a
global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and specifies
measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding
agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider
(http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html).


A coalition of major library and public interest organizations
recently issued a statement praising <italic>PLoS Biology</italic>. In
addition to SPARC, organizations voicing their support for PLoS
include the American Association of Law Libraries, Association of
Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of College and
Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Medical Library
Association, Open Society Institute, and Public Knowledge.  Several of
these organizations have been actively promoting alternatives to
subscription-based journal publishing.



For more information, contact:

Alison Buckholtz, alison@xxxxxxx

http://www.arl.org/sparc