Press Release

For Immediate Release March 27, 2001

For more information, contact: Alison Buckholtz, 202-296-2296 x115 or alison@arl.org

SPARC COLLABORATION WITH COMPUTER SCIENCE JOURNAL INTRODUCES COMMUNITY-BASED PRINT/ELECTRONIC SOLUTION

Journal of Machine Learning Research Partnership Underscores SPARC Commitment to Researcher-Controlled STM Journals

Washington, DC - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced its partnership with the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), a computer science journal launched last year and published by JMLR, Inc. JMLR, Inc. was founded by researchers now on the JMLR editorial board. The journal is peer-reviewed and published electronically free of charge, with print editions issued by the MIT Press on a quarterly basis. It is on the Web at: http://www.jmlr.org.

JMLR, which publishes high-quality scholarly articles in all areas of machine learning, competes with the commercial journal Machine Learning, which costs US$1006. A number of Machine Learning editorial board members have resigned to join the editorial board of JMLR.

SPARC, an alliance of libraries that supports economical alternatives to high-priced journals, will help enlist library support for JMLR, encouraging libraries to include the journals in their holdings records or link to the journal from their Web sites. SPARC also encourages libraries to support the printed edition of the journal as an interim archiving solution.

"The Journal of Machine Learning Research is especially committed to rigorous, rapid reviewing that brings the latest research to a wide audience, benefiting faculty and libraries alike," said Leslie Pack Kaelbling, editor of JMLR and a former Machine Learning editorial board member. "SPARC's partnerships with alternative journals such as JMLR are an extra boost to those in the research community who are committed to high-quality journals produced quickly and at a price that will guarantee access."

"The group of researchers behind JMLR have assumed a responsibility that more and more are taking on," said Rick Johnson, SPARC Enterprise Director. "The founders, publishers, editorial board members and authors all focus on producing a journal that will serve their community well, and this model is replicable in other fields."

JMLR is available in two full-text e-versions: a free site maintained by JMLR, Inc. and a paid electronic edition available on the CatchWord Service. The paid version provides additional features including linking to abstracting and indexing services, archiving, and mirror sites around the world.

SPARC also partners with MIT Press's MIT CogNet, which provides a unique electronic community for researchers in cognitive and brain sciences, with in-depth current and classic text resources, and a dynamic interactive forum for today's scholars, students, and professionals. CogNet is an awardee of SPARC's Scientific Communities Initiative, a one-time grant competition.


SPARC is an alliance of universities and research libraries that supports increased competition in scientific journal publishing. Its membership currently numbers approximately 200 institutions, library consortia, and affiliated organizations in North America, the U.K., continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Asia. SPARC is also affiliated with major library organizations in Canada, the U.K. and Ireland, Denmark, Australia and the USA. More information on SPARC is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

SPARC was developed as an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries.

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