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August 13, 2009, 09:57 AM ET
U. of California Press and JSTOR Announce New Platform for Scholarship
The University of California Press and JSTOR announced today that they have joined forces to create "a single, integrated platform" for new scholarship. The venture, called the Current Scholarship Program, will debut in 2011. It aims to provide a more cost-effective way for libraries and end users to have "seamless access" to all current content from the scholarly journals published by the California press, including those from scholarly associations. Back issues and primary-source material from libraries will also be included, the announcement said. Other publishers are invited to participate if they embrace an "articulated set of principles" behind the partnership. Those principles include "fair and transparent pricing" as well as long-term access and preservation.
Comments
1. malonef08 - August 13, 2009 at 09:10 pm
Stan, You may have already seen this article, but it not, here it is. An interesting new venture for libraries and end users. Will
2. abelvadi - August 15, 2009 at 02:31 pm
It's unfortunate that UC Press is devoting all this energy, and no doubt hard money too, into this multi-year payment-based platform effort just when so much of the scholarly world is working to move towards open access delivery platforms. The taxpayers of California would be better served for UC, including UC Press, to support open access principles. This looks like just another Highwire or Ingenta with a bit of consolidated billing thrown in (but that's what we pay our serials jobbers to do for us anyway).
What worries me most is that bit about "primary source material from libraries" which sounds like historical digitization work done by libraries (again, with taxpayer dollars) that might also find itself locked up behind a fee-for-access barrier. Again, so many libraries including my own are working hard to digitize materials for scholars and make them freely available on the Internet. We could use some help coordinating access to all these archives, but not at the expense (literally) of imposing licensing barriers to that access.
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