The Berkeley Electronic Press works with institutional partners to
create digital repositories of scholarly information. Digital
repositories are an ideal way to capture, preserve, and disseminate
the intellectual output of a university, consortium, or
discipline-specific organization. As the technology partner driving
the University of California's eScholarship Repository, bepress has
helped to create the most viable, vibrant digital repository within
academia today. To read more about the bepress-University of
California partnership, click here. The Berkeley Electronic Press also works with groups such as the New England Law Library Consortium and Engineering Conferences International to implement repositories customized by subject area (e.g., law) and content type (e.g., conference papers).
In June, 2004, The Berkeley Electronic Press announced a repository
partnership with ProQuest Information & Learning. The initiative -
Digital Commons@ - combines the bepress repository platform with
ProQuest's library of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).
Digital Commons@ institutions may easily and immediately populate
their repositories with historical ETDs, creating an instantly
viable and valuable research resource. For more details, please
click here.
A digital repository should be flexible in the types of documents it accepts (e.g., working papers, peer-reviewed materials, technical reports, presentations for the lay community, etc.), the paths to publication (self-publishing by authors vs. gatekeeping by site administrators), and the structure of the participating publication series (i.e., can individual departments or research units customize their space within the repository). Digital Commons@ allows for this flexibility, and also provides a wealth of key features:
Automatic conversion of documents to PDF
Ability to publish HTML
Ability to publish non-static resources such as sound and video files, data sets, and executables
Full-text searching
Saved Searches
Personalized email notification of newly published content
Browsing by date or author
GUI-based template editor
HTML-based templates
Customized controlled-vocabulary picklists for data entry
Site customization at any level
Auto-image generation
Branded publication sites for participating research units
Automated email interface between author and publication administrator
Usage statistics at the publication and paper level
Flexible document hierarchy
"Push" email capabilities
OAI compliant
Data exporting as XML
Data transfer to third party indexing services
Furthermore, Digital Commons@ licenses include hosting, offsite backup, technical support, training, and upgrades to the software. Ownership of all content is maintained by the licensee. To learn more about licensing opportunities, please email us.
A Note about Open Source vs. Commercial Implementations
"Open source" is a slightly misleading term. It suggests that the system is free. However, the hardware needed to house it, the staff needed to maintain it, the development resources needed to adapt it to a specific community's needs, and the technical support team needed to address user questions amounts to a substantial financial commitment. By way of illustrative example, MIT, with 9,200 faculty and staff and 1 campus, will spend more to support its open source implementation than the University of California, with 10 campuses and 159,000 faculty and staff, pays The Berkeley Electronic Press to operate its repository.
