ILA/ACRL

Open Access Toolkit for Iowa's Academic Librarians and Faculty

prepared by the Ad Hoc Advocacy Subcommittee on Serials and Open Access

The Ad Hoc Advocacy Subcommittee on Serials and Open Access issues has collected and annotated the following web resources for Iowa's academic librarians and faculty members to introduce the issues involved with the Open Access movement and to provide strategies for dealing with the problems with the precipitous and steady rise in the cost of serials.

• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
  SPARC has been at the forefront in the response to the serials crisis by actively supporting the creation of competitive non-profit and/or open-access alternatives to high-priced commercial journals/digital aggregations, advocating these alternatives to the various stakeholders, and leading awareness campaigns. Some key resources on this site are the FAQ and information about becoming a SPARC member and/or partner.
• ACRL Scholarly Communication Initiative
  Supporting the broader goals of combating the serials crisis by transforming scholarly communication, this ACRL site provides various resources. Key sources to peruse are the Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication, the Scholarly Communication Toolkit containing strategies for advocacy, the ACRL/ARL Institute on Scholarly Communication, the ACRL Taking Action resource, and the SCHOLCOMM Discussion list.
• Create Change
  Aimed at faculty and librarians, this site provides background information and data on the scholarly communications issues, as well as the framework and tools for local action. Create Change is an action-oriented initiative sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of College and Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association), and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
• Reshaping Scholarly Communication
  This University of California site provides current news, an excellent overview of the topic, plus specific actions to implement. The section Manage Your Intellectual Property includes sample addendum to publishing agreements to allow the author to retain certain copyrights.
• Open Access Webliography
  Written by Adrian Ho and Charles Bailey from the University of Houston, this webliography presents a wide range of freely available electronic resources (directories, e-journals, FAQs, mailing lists, and weblogs) related to the Open Access movement. In addition to this Webliography, Charles Bailey has also authored the the Open Access Bibliography and the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.
• Scholarly Journal Prices: Selected Trends and Comparisons
  Originally commissioned by Oxford University Press to investigate the extent of the "serials crisis" in 2004, this updated research project covers 2000-2006. It analyzes pricing trends of over 8,000 journals from 11 scholarly publishers. The entire report is available as a pdf as well as a press release and an executive summary with the report's highlights.

Ad Hoc Advocacy Subcommittee on Open Access members:
Mary Iber
Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh
Ellen Neuhaus
Michelle Holschuh Simmons

Questions or comments? Contact Michelle Holschuh Simmons at michelle-h-simmons@uiowa.edu