Sarah E. Thomas
University Librarian
Cornell University
Nancy L. Eaton
Dean of Libraries
Pennsylvania State University
Having the right tool for the job makes a huge difference, as we all know when we struggle to turn a Philips head screw with a flat-bladed screwdriver. DPubS, a new open source digital publishing system, promises to be a useful tool in the scholarly communications toolkit when it becomes widely available in mid-2006. Funded through The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, DPubS is a generalized version of the journal management and delivery software developed to support Project Euclid (projecteuclid.org), a user-centered initiative providing effective and affordable distribution of serial literature in mathematics and statistics. Cornell University Library will extend the capabilities of the software by adding an editorial management component as well as the ability to interoperate with two of the most widely adopted open source repositories, DSpace and FEDORA. This joint project between Cornell University and the Pennsylvania State University will provide the final code as open source in order that other institutions of higher education can utilize it.
The Cornell University Library, which operates arXiv and Project Euclid under the auspices of its Center for Innovative Publishing (http://www.library.cornell.edu/dlit/cip.html), is collaborating with the Pennsylvania State University Libraries and the Penn State University Press (via their partnership in the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing) in the development of DPubS. Pennsylvania History (http://dpubs.org/PennHistory) and Indonesia (http://e-publishing.library.cornell.edu/Indonesia) are two examples of titles made available through the current version of DPubS.
This non-technical briefing will provide an overview of the opportunities for libraries, presses, and other organizations to use DPubS as a tool for the transformation of scholarly communications. The presentation will demonstrate the software, describe the timeline for it wider availability, and offer a behind-the scenes review of the scholarly publishing activity of the Cornell University Library and Penn State University.
Handout – DPubS (MS Word)
Handout – Cornell (MS Word)
Handout – Penn State (MS Word)
PowerPoint Presentation (Eaton)
PowerPoint Presentation (Thomas)