2021 Update & SPARC Landscape Analysis & Roadmap for Action

Table of Contents

• Background

  1 min read

  How has the landscape, and path to action, been impacted by the pandemic and the increasing concentration of scholarly communications, courseware publishing, and data analytics into the hands of fewer commercial vendors?

• Continuing Challenges: Conflicts of Interest

  4 mins read

  Commercial publishers are pursuing interests that put them at odds with the interests of the academic community and tolerate internal conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, the responsibility for highlighting and resolving conflicts of interest falls squarely onto the academic community.

• Continuing Challenges: Communal Distribution

  1 min read

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• Continuing Challenges: The "Bigger Deal"

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• Emerging Challenges: Intro

  1 min read

  1. Impact of the Pandemic on Inequities Within the Academic Community, 2. Demand for Faster Scientific Communication Channels, 3. Rising Privacy and Surveillance Concerns in Technology Used by Academic Institutions, 4. Continued Consolidation of the Publishing Industry, 5. The Expansion of “Inclusive Access” Courseware

• Emerging Challenges: Impact of the Pandemic on Inequities

  1 min read

  The pandemic was like no other recent economic crisis in many ways, including in how it reverberated across the student population. The impact on underrepresented minority students in terms of enrollment, mental health, and graduation rates has disproportionately affected students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

• Emerging Challenges: Demand for Faster Scientific Communication Channels

  1 min read

  The large number of preprints submitted in 2020 illustrates a sea change in the communication practices of the research community when faced with the urgency of responding to a major humanitarian health crisis.

• Emerging Challenges: Rising Privacy and Surveillance Concerns

  8 mins read

  The rise in commercial publishers usage of tracking software in services sold to academic libraries which allows them to collect and sell data to third parties, as well as the risks and inequities of online exam proctoring tools, require attention of the academic community.

• Emerging Challenges: Continued Consolidation of the Publishing Industry

  1 min read

  A steady stream of consolidations continued apace, with academic publishing vendors announcing several significant deals.

• Emerging Challenges: The Expansion of “Inclusive Access” Courseware

  3 mins read

  The increasing number of academic institutions that have adopted IA programs should also adopt policies that ensure student awareness and choice. The best option is to make programs “opt-in,” so that students are charged only with their consent.

• The Impact of 2020 on the Landscape

  11 mins read

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• Academic Libraries and Their Home Institutions

  6 mins read

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• How To Respond

  16 mins read

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• Appendix--The performance of key companies in the past 12 months

  17 mins read

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