[BOAI] New Services, Enhanced Functionality for eScholarship

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from the California Digital Library.  --Peter Suber.]


October 19, 2009
Oakland, CA

New Look, Enhanced Services for eScholarship
UC’s open access digital publishing service launches new site October 19

eScholarship 
(<http://www.escholarship.org/>www.escholarship.org) 
launches a redesigned website October 19, with a 
substantial array of digital publishing services 
for the University of California scholarly 
community and a dynamic research platform for scholars worldwide.
Previously known as UC’s eScholarship Repository, 
the new eScholarship offers a robust scholarly 
publishing platform that enables departments, 
research units, publishing programs, and 
individual scholars associated with the 
University of California to have direct control 
over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

“Our relaunch of eScholarship reflects the 
enormous value we see in recasting the 
institutional repository as an open access 
publisher,” says Catherine Mitchell, Director of 
the Publishing Group at the California Digital 
Library. “There is significant need across the 
University of California campuses for a 
sustainable infrastructure to support the 
publication and dissemination of research. In our 
efforts to respond to this need, we have watched 
our institutional repository evolve into a 
dynamic platform for the original publication of scholarly work.”
eScholarship’s relaunch coincides with the first 
international Open Access Week (October 19 – 23), 
an event that marks the growing trend toward 
providing unfettered access to academic research 
and publications throughout the world.

eScholarship publication types
UC-affiliated scholars, editors, and research 
unit administrators can publish the following original works in eScholarship:
    * Journals
    * Books
    * Working Papers
    * Conference Proceedings
    * Seminar/Paper Series

eScholarship also continues to provide deposit 
and dissemination services for previously published articles or “postprints.”

New services, enhanced functionality

The relaunch of eScholarship brings new 
opportunities for digital publishing to the 
University of California and offers substantially 
improved services for previously supported publication types.
Books published in eScholarship are now eligible 
for a combined digital/print publication service, 
courtesy of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a 
joint program of UC Press and the California 
Digital Library. In addition, eScholarship now 
offers conference lifecycle support, including 
mechanisms for proposal submission, program 
display, and the ultimate publication of proceedings.
Much of the site redesign has been focused on 
improving the quality of access to eScholarship 
publications. The site is optimized for Google 
searches; PDFs can be viewed in their entirety 
without download; and research can be shared 
easily through third party social networking sites and RSS feeds.
Likewise, the ability to locate relevant 
scholarship within the new site is greatly 
improved as a result of the implementation of:
    * a highly developed similar items finder
    * visual snippets of keywords within 
documents (KWIC Pics) accessible from the search results page
    * facets for narrowing search results by UC 
campus, discipline, and peer review–status
    * keyword search capability within documents
These new services and tools all add up to a 
vastly enhanced experience for authors, editors, 
and publishing program directors – and for the 
researchers who seek out their work.

What can UC authors expect from publishing with eScholarship?
    * Digital publication of original scholarship
    * Digital dissemination of previously published materials
    * Manuscript and peer-review management systems
    * Significant reduction in time to publication
    * Author retention of copyright
    * Clear institutional affiliation and context
    * 
<http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=560&Itemid=391>Increased 
citation rates*
    * Perpetual access and preservation services
    * Full-text search and display
    * Comprehensive usage data
    * Free setup, training, and publishing support
Who is using eScholarship?
Among its many services, eScholarship supports 
the original publication of more than 20 peer-reviewed journals, including:
    * California Agriculture (UC Davis)
    * Journal of Transnational American Studies (UC Santa Barbara)
    * Nutrition Bytes (UCLA)
    * Places (UC Berkeley)
    * San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (UC Davis)
    * Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (UC Irvine)
“We have used eScholarship to manage, edit, and 
publish the online journal San Francisco Estuary 
and Watershed Science,” says Dr. Samuel N. Luoma, 
SFEWS Editor-in-Chief. “As a source of 
peer-reviewed, credible, and objective 
information, SFEWS is recognized by all 
stakeholders as playing an important role in 
understanding California’s water issues. We 
simply could not have succeeded in bringing this 
information to scientists, the public, and policy 
makers without the open access and high degree of 
professionalism provided by eScholarship. 
eScholarship is a service of inestimable value to 
the UC scholarly community, Californians in general, and the world.”
eScholarship also provides access to publications 
from nearly 250 research units and publishing programs across UC, including:
    * Center for Conservation Biology (UC Riverside)
    * Center for the Study of Democracy (UC Irvine)
    * Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (UCSF)
    * Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities (UC Berkeley)
    * International and Area Studies Publications (UC Berkeley)
    * Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    * Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UC San Diego)
    * Santa Cruz Center for International Economics (UC Santa Cruz)
“eScholarship is central to our publishing 
mission, offering a level of access, 
discoverability, and online permanence that 
traditional publishers cannot match,” says Nathan 
MacBrien, Publications Director, International 
and Area Studies Publications, UC Berkeley. 
“Anyone, anywhere in the world, with an Internet 
connection can read our books, and that is 
particularly important for scholars in developing 
countries where English-language books are difficult to come by.”

About eScholarship
Initiated in 2002 as a collaborative development 
effort between the Berkeley Electronic Press and 
the California Digital Library, eScholarship now 
houses over 30,000 publications with more than 9 
million downloads to date. eScholarship offers 
the UC academic community a robust alternative to 
traditional scholarly publishing channels, 
supporting the dissemination of UC research at 
all stages of the scholarly lifecycle to all 
corners of the world. The rate of usage of these 
materials has grown dramatically in the past 7 
years, now often exceeding 170,000 full-text downloads per month.

eScholarship is a project of the Publishing Group 
of the California Digital Library and a showcase 
for the group’s open source search and display 
technology development. eScholarship’s 
publication submission system was originally 
developed and is still maintained by the Berkeley Electronic Press.
*http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=560&Itemid=391 




________________________________________
Elise Proulx
Outreach & Marketing Coordinator
Publishing Group
California Digital Library
University of California

510.587.6439 / 510.893.5212 (Fax)
<mailto:elise.proulx at ucop.edu>elise.proulx at ucop.edu
www.escholarship.org

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