E-prints: the future of scholarly publishing?

Citation

(2003), "E-prints: the future of scholarly publishing?", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2003.12231aab.047

E-prints: the future of scholarly publishing?

E-prints: the future of scholarly publishing?

E-print repositories have already done much to fulfill the open archive initiative's aim of making information widely available and free-of-charge. By capturing and preserving research output, these institutional repositories offer researchers wider and more rapid dissemination of their work, showcase a university's quality, and enhance its visibility, status and public value. Repositories are emerging globally in a variety of forms. Examples include the University of California eScholarship Repository and the securing a hybrid environment for research preservation and access (SHERPA) initiative, which is studying the development of openly accessible digital repositories in universities. One of the leading initiatives is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's DSpace Project, a digital repository to capture, distribute and preserve MIT's intellectual output. The university believes these archives may provide more efficient open access to research than commercial journals. For some repositories, there is also an avowed intent to challenge the monopolies and aggregations of commercial publishers. Of course, Elsevier and a number of other publishers already allow refereed articles to be placed in institutional repositories. Since most scholarly literature – electronic or otherwise – is little used, alternatives to the present cycle of creation, production, distribution and access could be realized if a process of accreditation, refereeing and branding is developed. A recent alliance between Ingenta and the UK's University of Southampton reveals that some publishers see no contradiction being involved in free electronic journals as well as commercial output.

Source: InCite, October 2002.