http://escholarship.cdlib.org/repository.pdf
http://repositories.cdlib.org/
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Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 10:27:15 -0500
From: Peter Suber <pet...@earlham.edu>
To: fos-fo...@topica.com
Subject: California Digital Library Opens Working Papers Repository
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President
300 Lakeside Drive, 6th Floor Oakland, CA 94612
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: John Ober
(510) 987-0425
john.o...@ucop.edu
April 3, 2002
Oakland, CA
CALIFORNIA DIGITAL LIBRARY OPENS ONLINE REPOSITORY FOR WORKING PAPERS
The California Digital Library today announced the launch of a web site and
associated digital services to store and distribute academic research
results and working papers. The eScholarship Repository
(<http://repositories.cdlib.org/>http://repositories.cdlib.org/) includes a
set of author and reader services for the rapid dissemination of
scholarship authored or sponsored by faculty from the University of
California. Its initial focus will be on working papers from the humanities
and social sciences.
Built under a co-development partnership with the Berkeley Electronic Press
(bepress), the tools behind the eScholarship Repository improve the speed
and efficiency of sharing the results of scholarly efforts. For
participating scholars, departments, and research institutes, publishing
working papers is greatly streamlined. The submission, processing, and
dissemination of papers is managed through a simple web interface, the
bepress EdiKit system.
Likewise, readers can, at no charge, discover and view relevant research by
topic, author, or sponsoring research department with the siteís
straightforward organization and search tools. The system also allows users
to sign up for a service alerting them to new content in their specific
areas of interest.
Following focus groups and planning meetings in late 2001 with UC social
science scholars and research staff, the repository opens with
early-adopter social science research units at UC Berkeley and UCLA. The
Berkeley Olin Program in Law and Economics, Institute of Industrial
Relations, Institute of Business and Economic Research, Institute of
Transportation Studies, and others are moving existing working paper series
to the repository as well as using it to publish new scholarship. The
eScholarship Repository will also be the first stop for papers in the
University of California International and Area Studies (UCIAS)
peer-reviewed ePublications Program, an eScholarship initiative launched
last year
(<http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ias.html>http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ias.html).
"What's not to like?" asked Martin Wachs, Director of the Institute of
Transportation Studies and Professor of Civil Engineering and City and
Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. "I welcome any technology that improves
peopleís access to our research. By placing ITS researchersí papers in this
new digital repository, we will be able to reach a larger audience."
The repository represents an important component of the CDLís eScholarship
program, whose mission is to facilitate and support scholar-led innovations
in scholarly communication. A clear advantage of CDLís sponsorship of the
repository is its commitment to making the working papers available over
time.
"Of course, libraries have long been in the business of preserving
materials and providing ongoing access to them, so it makes sense that UCís
digital library would respond to these goals for digital scholarship as
well," said Catherine Candee, Director of Scholarly Communication
Initiatives for the CDL. "Scholars responded enthusiastically to our
support of innovations in the early dissemination of their work, but the
safekeeping and ongoing availability of that work, through inevitable
software and hardware changes, is of paramount concern to them and us as
well," she added.
Associated with the authors' concern for permanence of the digital versions
of their papers is a reader's need for reliable tracking of the evolution
of a work. The eScholarship Repository accommodates that need by
maintaining links and citations for previous or later versions of any
material posted.
CDL expects the collection to grow quickly in size and diversity, with the
addition of content from other social science and humanities institutes and
scholars. The eScholarship program is working with UC libraries and a
10-campus scholarly communication advisory body to schedule this phased
expansion.
Although the content of the repository is expected to grow to tens of
thousands of articles, eScholarship builds from a vision of researchers who
are able to search across many openly available repositories, leading to
single-point access to a global network of research results. By adopting a
technology for sharing repository contents, known as the Open Archive
Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesting protocol, the eScholarship repository
joins a set of like-minded initiatives to bring the vision a step closer.
According to Candee, the eScholarship Repository could not come at a better
time for social sciences. There are few well-organized alternatives with
non-profit backing and goals of low or no-cost access to social science
scholarship. In contrast to commercial ventures, that may charge both for
authors to deposit materials into a collection and for readers to search
and use a collection, the eScholarship model extends university support of
scholarship to include its dissemination to the broader community at no cost.
"I am thrilled that an institution as large and influential as the
University of California is providing a viable option for social scientists
and humanities scholars to share their work," said Marc Mayerson, Assistant
Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA. "What better role could the CDL play than
to help us help ourselves in creating faster, broader, permanent means of
building upon each other's work, or to manage the output from the
Universityís investment in scholars and scholarship?"
# # #
Editors: Additional information about the California Digital Library may be
found at the CDL web site, http://www.cdlib.org
Additional information about the eScholarship program may be found at
http://www.escholarship.cdlib.org/
For additional information about the CDL please contact John Ober, CDL
director for education & strategic innovation, (510) 987-0425; or
John.Ober@ ucop.edu
------------------------------------
For prior American Scientist threads, see:
"Re: Eprints Open Archive Software"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0750.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1078.html
"ePrint Repositories"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1093.html
"California Digital Library ePrint Repositories"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1249.html
"California Digital Library/Berkeley Electronic Press Partnership"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1561.html
"Berkeley Electronic Press's Self-Archiving Policy"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1896.html
