His "Guide to the Archival Materials of the German-speaking Emigration to the United States after 1933” was published in four volumes by the Munich-based publisher Verlag K. G. Saur between 1978 and 1997. Here Spalek concentrated not only on his own discipline (literature), including documents pertaining to writers, but also covered the estates of political publicists, artists and scientists. These volumes consequently laid the foundations for systematic research into the entire scope of forced intellectual transfer, a phenomenon that is unique in the history of the 20th century.

His cooperation with the German National Library goes back to the early 1970s. For 13 years, Prof. Spalek worked with the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the German National Library on various acquisition projects, supported initially by the German Research Foundation and later by the Hertie Foundation, the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Hamburger Stiftung für Wissenschaft und Kultur (Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture). Since then, he has contributed 76 estates and partial estates from academics, publicists, authors and artists exiled in the USA to the German Exile Archive 1933–1945. These include the estates of sociologists Joseph and Alice Maier, politologist Sigmund Neumann, authors Soma Morgenstern and Ivan Heilbut, classical scholar Ernst Moritz Manasse, Hittite scholar Hans Gustav Güterbock, and the Aufbau archive, New York.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the commemorative publication “Preserving the Memory of Exile” edited by Jörg Thunecke and Wulf Koepke is to be published by Edition Refugium, Nottingham. Professor Spalek is being honoured not only for his contribution to the classification and preservation of sources, but also for his achievements as a researcher. The compilation “German-Speaking Emigration to the USA 1933–1945”, edited by Konrad Feichenfeld, Sandra Hawrylchak and Spalek himself, contains essays and bibliographies relating to numerous renowned and less well known but equally important writers, publicists and cultural scholars. Spalek’s other works include a 4-volume “bibliographic handbook” on Lion Feuchtwanger that was completed in 2004. His ideas and influence are also evident in numerous works published by his students.

Professor Spalek's commitment to preserving estates and editing anthologies relating to German-speaking exile literature in the USA is not only important from an academic perspective. As Roland Jaeger remarks: for Spalek, exile research is “not just a specialised task, but also a moral and political mission” (R. Jaeger: Im Einsatz für das Exil. John M. Spaleks Studienreihe zur deutschsprachigen Exilliteratur in den USA kommt zum Abschluss [Mission exile. John M. Spalek’s series of studies on German-speaking exile in the USA is complete]. In: Aufbau, no. 21, Oct. 30, 2003).