PRESS RELEASE: OUP supports Oxford University Library Services "Open Archives" Initiative
Oxford University Press (OUP) is delighted to announce a partnership with Oxford University Library Services, (OULS) in support of the national SHERPA project.
Under the terms of the agreement, OUP will provide the Systems and Electronic Resources (SERS) department of OULS with online access to articles by Oxford University-based authors published in many of the Oxford Journals from 2002. The articles will then be searchable via the OULS pilot institutional repository and available free of charge to researchers across the globe. SHERPA is a three-year project that aims to investigate the concept of institutional open archive repositories. The creation, population and management of these repositories are at the heart of the project.
Oxford University is one of nine UK institutions currently taking part, and providing OULS with access to such a large mass of research will allow valuable experimentation and evaluation to take place.
"I am delighted that we are the first publisher to become involved in this innovative project," commented Martin Richardson, Director of OUP's Journals Division. "Access to our online journals corpus will provide a substantial collection of high quality scholarly research across a broad range of disciplines, facilitating investigations into some key technical, economic and cultural issues surrounding the creation of institutional repositories."
"It is early days for the SHERPA project at OULS," explained Frances Boyle, Electronic Resources Manager based at SERS. "Our first task is to set up a server with the eprints.org software over the coming months. The collaboration with OUP will enable us to populate the repository with quality content. This initiative will kick-start the project and will enable OULS to host a demonstrator system for the many interested stakeholders at Oxford."
More detailed information about the project will be available later this
year from OULS at www.eprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk
For further information contact:
Rachel Goode,
Communications Manager Journals Division,
Oxford University Press
Great Clarendon Street,
Oxford,
OX2 6DP
Tel: +44 1865 353388
Mobile: +44 7957 491505
Email: rachel.goode@oupjournals.org
Web: www.oupjournals.org
About Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. OUP publishes over 180 journals, two-thirds
of which are published in collaboration with learned societies and other international
organisations.
For further information about the Journals Division, visit www.oupjournals.org.
About OULS
The Systems and Electronic Resources Service is the IT support facility for
Oxford University Library Services (including the Bodleian Library) and provider
of scholarly electronic resources across all the libraries of Oxford and to
academic users both on and off campus. For more than a decade, the Oxford
libraries have been at the forefront of electronic provision within the UK
and currently provide access to one of the largest portfolios of scholarly
electronic resources, over 500 datasets and 7,000 electronic journals, in
the UK. The range of material includes bibliographic, full-text, geospatial
and image databases, held locally and on the internet in all subject areas.
A strategic aim is to provide a "hybrid library" environment that will integrate
library information services in a seamless and coherent manner to the benefit
of users.
For further information about OULS, visit www.lib.ox.ac.uk.
About SHERPA
SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access)
is a three-year project funded by JISC and CURL and hosted by Nottingham University.
It aims to address issues surrounding the future of scholarly communication
and publishing by creating a network of open access repositories to release
institutionally-produced research findings onto the web. Nine institutions
have been enlisted as development partners, with more to come. SHERPA will
work through the technical, managerial and cultural issues of implementing
institutionally-based open access repositories (so called e-print archives)
that comply with the Open Archives Initiative standard. SHERPA will also provide
information and advice to other institutions thinking of implementing their
own institutional repositories.
For more information about SHERPA, please visit www.sherpa.ac.uk.