[Forwarding from bepress. --Peter Suber.] DATE 5/5/2011, Berkeley, CA – Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) announced that Catherine Candee has joined the company as vice president for marketing and community engagement. Catherine arrives from the University of California (UC), where she distinguished herself as a leader and innovator in scholarly communications, and the founding director of eScholarship, a university-wide publishing service and one of the first and most successful institutional repositories in the world.
Catherine played a central role in the early development of Digital Commons, bepress’s flagship IR. UC’s eScholarship repository was the first to use the hosted Digital Commons platform, with extraordinary and rapid success: in two years, over 250 academic departments and institutes embraced the platform to disseminate their working papers, technical reports, books and articles and, eventually, dozens of born-digital journals. Expanding the IR to include an array of publishing services, Catherine also spearheaded the new concept “University as Publisher.” Jean-Gabriel Bankier, bepress President and CEO, said “Catherine was one of the first to realize the full potential of a modern IR as a set of vital services that libraries can offer their campus, with publishing at its core. Her vision and willingness to take risks has made a profound difference in the library community, and her success has inspired many others to take an active role in publishing and promoting their campus’s scholarly work online.” At bepress, Catherine will lead Digital Commons marketing and continue to build the IR community, with a special focus on the new roles of academic librarians. “Ten years ago at UC, we as librarians identified a real need among faculty for new ways to support their growing array of digital scholarship,” said Catherine Candee. “Today, libraries have succeeded in making IRs a must-have on every campus. Digital Commons offers the strongest solution, and with 60 new customers last year and a vibrant community of successful sites, it’s something I am very excited to be part of.” About Berkeley Electronic Press Founded by professors in 1999, Berkeley Electronic Press publishes peer-reviewed electronic journals and develops software for the next generation of scholarly publishing. The bepress journals collection, ResearchNow, redefines what scholarly journals can do today, with fast and high quality peer review at sustainable prices. The bepress open-access institutional repository platform, Digital Commons, is the world's leading hosted IR, featuring an innovative suite of publishing and software services that empowers scholarly communities to showcase and share their works for maximum impact. Learn more at www.bepress.com. Warm regards, Jean-Gabriel Bankier President & CEO Berkeley Electronic Press 510-665-1200 x124 http://www.bepress.com bepress: sustainable scholarly publishing
