In my role as Managing Director of Research Products—which includes Scopus, SciVal, Science Direct, SSRN, Mendeley, Pure and now bepress—my job is to set our products up for future success by serving the needs of our customers. I have heard from JG that many of you have questions about the future of bepress and more specifically Digital Commons®, and are eager to hear from someone at Elsevier. I am happy to address those concerns.
Let me start by saying we know that the future of scholarly communication lies in opening up a broader array of content to the world. We see bepress as an important part of our future, and indeed, it’s an increasingly open access future. Our goal, in partnering with bepress, is to help you and, others who are similarly committed to sharing your institution’s research, grow your open access programs.
To us, supporting bepress means letting it retain all the core characteristics of what has made it successful thus far. As JG has been saying, you will continue to communicate with and be served by bepress staff in Berkeley. Bepress will retain the same pricing model that provides for unlimited services, and you control your content in the same way you always have. There are no plans to change the branding on your Digital Commons® site.
We do see an opportunity to make Digital Commons® better for customers as we will show you over the coming months and years. Any improvements or expansions to the existing Digital Commons® platform will come with no change to the core-pricing model, service model or bepress staff relationship model that is clearly important to you.
Your community has redefined the discourse around open access, institutional repositories, and scholarly communication. We are eager to take cues from you and from bepress, not only on how we think and talk about open access, but on the direction of the product as well. I see JG and the bepress product team as experts at understanding and prioritizing the needs of their users. I will be looking to them to share what your libraries and campuses need in order to be more successful.
The last thing we want is to change what is already working well for you, and we have heard that is a lot. I hope you’ll continue to share your feedback and questions with JG and the bepress staff. You have tremendous advocates in them.
Olivier Dumon
