Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress)

Bepress history Started 10 years ago by University of California at Berkeley faculty to publish scholarly journals In 2003 bepress and the University of California developed Digital Commons as a central repository for scholarly publications Sales and marketing handled by ProQuest for 5 years but that responsibility is now back with bepress as of July of 2007

Bepress organisation Bepress is based in Berkeley, California About 50 people work at bepress Faculty founders are still active. Aaron Edlin is Chairman of the bepress Board. Core groups are Development and Client Services Related groups are Journals (we have about 50 scholarly journals), Software (Digital Commons and SelectedWorks) and a new group for Societies

Digital Commons Digital Commons is designed to gather, preserve and present an institution’s intellectual output –Faculty members’ scholarly output –A central repository for the institution –Using the skills of the librarians Digital Commons’ powerful publishing technology enables the university to become a publisher –To reach out to the university’s communities –To provide a peer-reviewed scholarly publishing platform for faculties, institutes, and researchers –Potential for a shift in the scholarly communications paradigm Digital Commons is designed to brand the intellectual resources of the institution and its faculty

McMaster University’s Russell Journal

Digital Commons: who uses the platform About 100 universities and colleges around the world that use Digital Commons More than 1/3 are research institutions 2/3 have graduate schools: Masters and Doctoral programs

Future of Digital Commons Gaining momentum within academic institutions –Increasing interest in Software as a Service (SaaS) –Convergence of institutional, faculty and librarian collaboration because of the institutional repository –Significant growth in scholarly publishing – we’re adding about 5 new journals per month Bepress is offering more publishing services –Working with editors to design e-journals –Beginning to offer professional publishing services

Development plans - Vision Addressing scholarly communication crisis –University as publisher: continuing to enhance editorial management capabilities in Digital Commons Make Digital Commons the easiest system to adopt & use –Fast & easy implementation –Easy to collect and manage content Focus on usability

Development plans - Interoperability Exposing metadata: –Enhance OAI-PMH & SRU XML gateway to expose content for easy harvesting and searching across repositories Ingest –SWORD (Simple Web service Offering Repository Deposit). Enables deposit of material from one IR to another. –Bepress batch upload: easier to load content into DC repository Importing/exporting citations: easier integration to with bibliographic management systems like Endnote

Development plans - Initiatives Image galleries Reporting improvements Streamlined workflows – new Edikit Enhanced administrative controls –More local control, over the site appearance & behaviour Focus on design, branding and showcasing content SelectedWorks: improve administrative & individual controls

Digital Commons fills a vacuum in scholarly communication “This suggests a role for institutional repositories beyond that of archival storage and accessibility enhancement: in fact, they are well-suited to become online publishers giving voice to a wide range of authors normally excluded, put off, or ill- served by the vagaries, idiosyncrasies, delays, obligations, and hoops-jumping of the conventional publication routes.” Paul Royster, "Publishing Original Content in an Institutional Repository" Serials Review (2007).