Trying to cut serial costs

Citation

Fitzsimmons, E. (1999), "Trying to cut serial costs", The Bottom Line, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.1999.17012aab.007

Trying to cut serial costs

Trying to cut serial costs

Keywords: Competition, Publishers, Serials

The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) have recently endorsed SPARC. SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) is an ambitious effort on the part of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to create more competition in the field of scholarly journals. SPARC encourages scholarly publishers ­ including university presses and scholarly societies ­ to initiate the publication of alternative titles to the higher-priced journals on the market today. Membership of SPARC is $5,000 for both members and affiliates, and in addition to the dues, which support the organization's initiatives, members and affiliates must commit to purchasing a minimum of $7,000 worth of SPARC-related publications. Originally only ARL members were invited to join SPARC, but membership is now open to international academic and research institutions. In the six months since SPARC started to seek members from ARL institutions, it has grown to 105 members.