CU Library to distribute its open source electronic publishing system

Cornell University Library is developing an open source publication management system that will provide authors and publishers with a more affordable way to publish scholarly research on the Web. In making its DPubS software available to libraries, university presses and other independent publishers, Cornell will expand opportunities for creative communication among scholars around the world.

Cornell has received a $670,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enhance and extend its innovative electronic publishing software called DPubS (Digital Publishing System).

"DPubS will offer libraries, university presses, and others the capability to publish open-access or subscription-based journals more cost effectively. It should be a terrific catalyst for change in scholarly publishing," said Cornell University Librarian Sarah Thomas.

Cornell originally created the DPubS software for Project Euclid, http://projecteuclid.org, another Mellon Foundation-supported initiative, which has aided independent publishers of mathematics and statistics journals in making the transition from print to electronic publishing. Librarians and information technology specialists at Cornell will now re-engineer DPubS as a general-purpose platform to support electronic publishing of scholarly literature in diverse fields. DPubS will support peer review, have extensive administrative functionality and be operable with other open source repository systems such as Fedora and DSpace.

Cornell Library is collaborating with University Libraries and the university press at Pennsylvania State University to test and refine DPubS. The journal Indonesia, published by Cornell's Southeast Asia Program, and Pennsylvania History, the official journal of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, will be among the first titles to make the transition to electronic publishing with the new DPubS software. Nancy Eaton, dean of University Libraries at Penn State, emphasized that "DPubS will play an important role in accelerating the scholarly communications partnership among the faculty, our press and the University Libraries."

This flexible online publishing tool will aid institutions of higher education and research in managing and disseminating the intellectual efforts of scholars and researchers. The DPubS beta version will be available in 2005, with final release scheduled for 2006. An initial meeting to elicit development recommendations from interested libraries and publishers is scheduled for late October at Cornell.

Institutions and organizations interested in using DPubS should contact David Ruddy, the project's manager at Cornell, at dwr4@cornell.edu or phone 255-6803.