NEWSRELEASE
Contact: Elise Proulx
(510) 587-6439
elise.proulx_at_ucop.edu
October 19, 2009
Oakland, CA
New Look, Enhanced Services for eScholarship
UC's open access digital publishing service launches new site October
19
eScholarship (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
* 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&I
temid=391
-END-
________________________________________
Elise Proulx
Outreach & Marketing Coordinator
Publishing Group
California Digital Library
University of California
510.587.6439 / 510.893.5212 (Fax)
elise.proulx_at_ucop.edu
www.escholarship.org
Received on Mon Oct 19 2009 - 05:22:53 BST