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A coalition of university libraries is stepping up its battle to circumvent the high price of specialized scientific journals by offering $0.5 million dollars to universities and professional societies to come up with web-based information resources at universities.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an offshoot of the Association of Research Libraries (see Nature 393, 719; 1998 and Nature 397, 195; 1999), last year helped to launch several journals to compete with publications which the libraries consider too expensive.

The coalition, which has 162 members, will make awards totalling $500,000 to developers of web-based venues for publishing research. The money was raised from the $5,000 annual dues of SPARC members, including the libraries of the universities of Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and California, as well as Canadian, Danish, Australian and British universities.

The idea, says Rick Johnson, SPARC's executive director, is to get applicants to find “new ways of disseminating research that are really responsive to the needs of scientists” and are cheaper than journals.

The aim is to create electronic repositories where research can be posted, discussed and seen by scientists worldwide, without waiting for journal publication.

The best-known model of such a resource — the Los Alamos e-print archives — is a “macro” example of what SPARC hopes to fund, says Jim Neal, dean of university libraries at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the SPARC steering committee. But he says proposals may range in strategy and structure.

One application for the SPARC awards is likely to come from Columbia University, where an earth-sciences web resource is being developed. Columbia Earthscape , a web-based publication scheduled for launch this autumn, will publish papers in their formative stages, early versions of conference proceedings, data sets and a magazine on science policy.

“We're not just trying to mimic on-line something that's available in print,” says Kate Wittenberg, editor-in-chief at Columbia University Press. “We are trying to figure out ways to make very innovative, cutting-edge materials available at a cost possible for libraries to afford.”

One weakness is how to entice scientists to use such sites when they lack the prestige of peer-reviewed, print journals. This is why support for the proposals from scientific societies is vital, says Johnson. “The prestige that a society can breathe into a venture is going to be very important.”

In July, SPARC will help to launch a third journal to compete with an established publication. Organic Letters, to be published by the American Chemical Society, will be available in both print and electronic forms for $2,300. Its competitor, Tetrahedron Letters, published by Elsevier, costs $9,862.

SPARC supports alternative journals by delivering its library members as customers. So far, it has helped to launch Evolutionary Ecology Research and PhysChemComm, an electronic journal.