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This landscape analysis was produced by SPARC in response to the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical infrastructure in our institutions. It is intended to provide a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions, and the implications of these on the operations of our libraries and home institutions. It also outlines suggestions for an initial set of strategic responses for the community to evaluate in order to ensure it controls both this infrastructure and the data generated by/resident on it. We are at a critical juncture where there is a pressing need for the academic community – individually and collectively – to make thoughtful and deliberate decisions about what and whom to support – and under what terms and conditions. These decisions will determine who ultimately controls the research and education process; and whether we meaningfully address inequities created by legacy players or simply recreate them in new ways. These decisions will shape libraries’ role in the scholarly enterprise, now and for the future.

Publishing cooperatives — owned, controlled, and benefiting non–profit publishers — would provide an organizational and financial structure well suited to balancing society publishers’ twin imperatives of financial sustainability and mission fulfillment. Market challenges and structural constraints often render it difficult for small society publishers to compete individually. Publishing cooperatives would allow society publishers to remain independent while operating collectively to overcome both structural and strategic disadvantages and to address the inefficiencies in the market for academic journals. Publishing cooperatives can provide a scaleable publishing model that aligns with the values of the academy while providing a practical financial framework capable of sustaining society publishing programs.

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OA business models must be sustainable over the long term, and article processing charge payments do not work for all; Subscribe to Open (S2O) is proposed, and being tested, as an alternative model. The S2O model motivates subscribers to participate through economic self‐interest, without reliance on institutional altruism or collective behaviour. The S2O offer targets current subscribers, uses existing subscription systems, and recurs annually, allowing publishers to control risk and revert to conventional subscriptions if necessary. An Annual Reviews pilot is currently testing the S2O model with five journals.

Many colleges and universities today offer students, faculty, alumni, and community members access to on-campus recreation centers. These centers offer cardiovascular and weight-training equipment, swimming pools, snack areas and juice bars, multipurpose gymnasiums, racquetball courts, locker rooms, saunas, steam rooms, and a variety of other amenities. These services are often included in a student's semester activity fee, while many institutions make the facilities available at a nominal charge for faculty and staff. In order to entice faculty and staff utilize these facilities, some institutions have begun creating and offering incentive packages for users. This research is focused on reasons why employee participation is beneficial to both the individual and the institution, how employees can be motivated through the use of incentives, the various types of participation incentives offered, examples of successful incentives, and recommendations for future incentive plans.

SPARC’s Roadmap for Action builds on our previously released Landscape Analysis, providing a set of individual and collective actions that institutions can consider taking to help ensure control of their data and data infrastructure. Recognizing that solutions to these complex issues are not “one size fits all,” this document offers a framework with multiple, concrete solutions that individual organizations can improve and adapt to their local culture and needs. The solution set is by no means exhaustive, and is intended as a starting point for the community to build upon.Produced by Claudio Aspesi, in collaboration with the SPARC team, the Roadmap for Action is intended to inform discussions of these issues on campus and to serve as a catalyst for taking considered action.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of a live presentation at the 2014 Charleston Conference. Slides and videos are available at http://2014charlestonconference.sched.org/ Leila Salisbury: Good afternoon. I'm happy to hear it's still lively. This is very nice. It's really good that you're all here to hear a quirky piece I feel will solve our issues in scholarly communications over the next hour, so congratulations for coming here. You'll find this very edifying.