[BOAI] New Publishing Opportunity at the University of California

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from the University of California Press.  --Peter Suber.]


For Immediate Release:                                   For More
Information:



*December 8, 2009*

*
*

*Laura Cerruti*, Director of Digital Content Development

University of California Press

2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley CA 94704

510) 643-9793, laura.cerruti at ucpress.edu



*Catherine Mitchell*, Director, Publishing Group

California Digital Library

300 Lakeside Drive, 7th floor

Oakland, CA  94612

510-587-6132,  catherine.mitchell at ucop.edu


New Publishing Opportunity at the University of California

UC Press and the California Digital Library announce publishing services
initiative

* *

*OAKLAND, Calif. — December 8, 2009 —*University of California Press and the
California Digital Library are pleased to announce the official launch of a
collaborative publishing venture, *UC Publishing Services (UCPubS). *UCPubS
offers a suite of open access digital and print publication services to
University of California centers, institutes, and departments that produce
scholarly books. By coordinating the publishing efforts of UC Press, the
California Digital Library’s eScholarship program, and publishing partners
throughout the UC system, UCPubS provides a sustainable publishing model
that extends the University’s capacity to disseminate its scholarship to the
world.

Building on current publishing activities, UCPubS enables organizations such
as the Townsend Center at UC Berkeley and the Higher Education Research
Institute at UCLA to focus on scholarship rather than on distribution, sales
and web platform development. “Campus partners immediately recognize the
benefits of this program as it solves so many of the logistical challenges
they face as small publishers,” according to Laura Cerruti, Director of
Digital Content Development at UC Press.  These challenges include reaching
a broader public by increasing print sales and gaining access to new market
channels; streamlining peer review and manuscript production; reliable
preservation of digital publications; and tracking usage and sales of
publications. “The program seeks to enable greater visibility of
UC–affiliated research while reducing duplication of effort and cost,”
Cerruti added.

With this shared resource model,* *campus publishing partners* *are
responsible for selection of content, peer review, editing, design, and
composition. eScholarship* *provides* *open-access digital publishing, peer
review and manuscript management tools, and preservation. University of
California Press* *handles printing (using print-on-demand technology),
sales and distribution of print publications, and online marketing for both
print and digital publications.  “For the University Press and the Library,
it is a mutually beneficial partnership, enabling us to amplify our capacity
to serve our institution in ways that neither one of us could do as
effectively alone. Combining eScholarship’s open access platform with UC
Press’s commercial distribution capacity brings two seemingly divergent
models together as a flexible solution to monographic publishing needs at
UC,” says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the
California Digital Library.

UC Press and the CDL have embarked on this collaborative publishing venture
in response to compelling research revealing the vibrant publishing activity
across the UC campuses and the need for systemwide services to support such
activity. “UCPubS gives us access to the considerable expertise, capacity,
and scale of both UC Press and the CDL, which allows our authors to reach a
worldwide audience—both in print and online—that would be difficult for us
to reach on our own,” Nathan MacBrien, Director of the Global, Area, and
International Archive, said.

Several partners are already using UCPubS services: The Bancroft Library, UC
Berkeley <http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/>; California Academic Partnership
Program (CAPP) <http://www.calstate.edu/CAPP/>; The Earl Warren Institute of
Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity, UC Berkeley School of Law; The Townsend
Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley <http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/>;
Global, Area, and International Archive
(GAIA)<http://escholarship.org/uc/gaia>;
Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA
<http://www.heri.ucla.edu/>; Regional
History Project at the University Library, UC Santa
Cruz<http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/>;
and the UCLA Graduate Student Association. Yet the program’s benefits are
greater than the sum of its parts. By placing valuable research in a UC
context and a global conversation, UCPubS is an important piece in UC’s
broader effort to ensure a sustainable scholarly publishing system in
support of its research and teaching enterprise.

More at: http://escholarship.org/publish_ucpubs.html
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