Re: ELECTRONIC UNIVERSITY PRESSES

[Greg Tananbaum <greg@bepress.com>]

Hi Anthony,

As Mary Summerfield points out, a number of university presses are working
within the institutional repository structure to launch e-journals.  For
example, see the work that the University of California has done with its
eScholarship Repository.  A list of its peer-reviewed publications may be
found here:

http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/peer_review_list.html

A number of our partners (recall that The Berkeley Electronic Press, among
other activities, licenses institutional repository technologies) are
forging ahead on the e-journal front.  Some, such as Boston College, are
using IRs as a journal platform in lieu of a formal university press.  
For examples, see:

http://escholarship.bc.edu/peer_review_list.html

It is important, in my opinion, for those interested in using the IR
platform to launch e-journals to be called to a higher standard than other
repository participants.  Both CDL and BC, for example, have set tight
regulations on the creation of e-journals.  CDL provides a great overview
for faculty considering founding e-journals - see
http://repositories.cdlib.org/peerreview/faq.html .  Speaking only from
the Digital Commons perspective (second editorial aside - bepress teams
with ProQuest to market and enhance our IR technology), I can say that it
is easy technically and financially to start an e-journal.  This facility
masks a larger policy issue, of course.  The creation of dozens or
hundreds of e-journals without serious planning will lead to a bonzanza of
one- or two-issue failures.  Launching a raft of working paper series that
fail to grow in their content is already a problem for many open source
repositories (see Susan Gibbons' excellent recent work).  A similar
failure among e-journals would be a blow to open access, university
presses, and the general movement of "alternative forms of scholarly
communication".

Best, Greg
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Greg Tananbaum
President
The Berkeley Electronic Press

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