Columbia, California Digital Library and MIT Receive Support for Innovative Electronic Ventures in Scientific Publishing
Washington, DC -- SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) announced today the three winners of its Scientific Communities Initiative grant competition. The grants are awarded to spur digital science publishing ventures based in academe. Columbia University Press's Columbia Earthscape, the California Digital Library's eScholarship, and MIT's CogNet will each receive substantial support from the Scientific Communities Initiative.
The Scientific Communities Initiative's goal is to stimulate and accelerate the creation of new non-profit information communities for users in key fields of science, technology or medicine. The awardees were chosen on the basis of an independent peer review; compatibility with SPARC values; feasibility of the business model and plan; and likelihood of becoming financially self-sustaining. The three selected projects will receive a total of $519,000 in start-up development funding.
"Each of these projects has enormous potential to transform the scientific information economy," said Rick Johnson, SPARC Enterprise Director. "Each will reduce the cost of information access and use, expand the dissemination of research, support practice and teaching, and generally benefit science, academe and society at large. The Scientific Communities Initiative grants are direct investments in pursuit of our primary goal: to facilitate a more effective and responsive system of scholarly communication."
The selected projects also indicate the capacity to foster a more open and competitive marketplace in which academe exercises an increased role. Significantly, in some cases the project chosen had input from the university press; the library; the computing center; and the faculty. This was the case with Columbia University's Columbia Earthscape: An Online Resource in Earth Sciences, to be managed within the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) under the direction of Kate Wittenberg, Director of EPIC.
"The Scientific Communities Initiative grant will allow us to develop Columbia Earthscape much more effectively and quickly than would have been possible otherwise," said Kate Wittenberg. "It will help us enter a competitive market with a distinct advantage as a university-based publication."
"Columbia University Press and Libraries are delighted to be part of the Scientific Communities Initiative," said Elaine F. Sloan, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University. "We are particularly pleased that our model of library/information technologist/publisher collaboration has resulted in an award-winning project."
Columbia Earthscape will include reports of research projects and conference proceedings as well as curricular materials for teaching about the earth. It will link to data sets and computer models and an online magazine, Earth Affairs, designed to educate undergraduate students, the general public, and policy-makers about current issues in earth interactions, domestic and international environmental policy, and other related topics.
eScholarship, another SCI grant awardee, is to be managed within the California Digital Library (CDL) of the University of California, under the direction of Richard Lucier, CDL Executive Director and University Librarian. The CDL is a tenth research library for the University whose mission and funding include a significant continuing commitment to innovation in scholarly communications.
"The University of California's eScholarship activities will provide scholars with digital technologies for experiments in scholarly communication that are designed and managed by the primary producers, consumers, and arbiters of quality scholarship, the scholars themselves," said Richard Lucier, University Librarian and Executive Director of the California Digital Library. "We're very appreciative of the leadership provided by SPARC and pleased that support from the Scientific Communities Initiative program is available to help us create the scholar-led community of support, innovation, and policy setting necessary for eScholarship's success."
eScholarship will to support scholar-led innovations in scholarly communication by providing an infrastructure for experimentation. The first part includes an electronic print (e-print) database system; the second part includes a set of support services and community building activities for its use. Initially, eScholarship will focus on creating electronic publications and support services that build upon and extend existing, proven innovations in this area. Planned objectives include: development and deployment of the eScholarship Archive, initially by mirroring and extending the Los Alamos National Laboratory xxx e-print server; creation of new and linkage of existing digital journals; implementation and support services for community-led innovations; and integration of digital publishing and digital access.
MIT CogNet: The Internet Gateway to the Cognitive and Brain Sciences, the third SCI awardee, will be managed within the MIT Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Teresa Ehling, Manager of the Digital Projects Lab. CogNet will be further developed in collaboration with the MIT Libraries and the CogNet Academic Council, with representatives from Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, Columbia, UC San Diego and the Salk Institute.
"The MIT Press is delighted to be the recipient of an inaugural grant under SPARC's Scientific Communities Initiative," said Ann J. Wolpert, Director of Libraries and Chair of the MIT Press Management Board. "This generous grant will enable the MIT Press and the MIT Libraries to experiment with exciting new forms of scholarly communication in an important, emerging academic discipline. SPARC's recognition of this new, productive collaboration between a university press and a university library affirms MIT's commitment to innovation in scholarly communication."
"With SPARC's support, the Press and the Libraries hope to evince a new business model for the design and delivery of scholarly information on line," said Teresa Ehling, Manager of the Digital Projects Lab, The MIT Press. "The CogNet project is a testimony to the efficacy of a library-publisher alliance."
As an electronic community for the cognitive and brain sciences, CogNet integrates a range of online utilities in a unique customized workspace, delivering access to the very best, accurate, and most timely technical information in contemporary cognitive and brain research. (The prototype is now live at http://cognet.mit.edu.)
Grant awards begin immediately and are implemented over a three-year period. For further information about individual projects or to reach managers of Columbia Earthscape, eScholarship, or MIT CogNet, please contact the institution at the number listed below:
- Columbia Earthscape/Kate Wittenberg: 212-666-1000 x7110 or kw49@columbia.edu.
- eScholarship/John Ober, California Digital Library: 510-987-0425 or
john.ober@ucop.edu
- MIT CogNet/Teresa Ehling, MIT: 617-253-1672 or ehling@mitpress.mit.edu.
SPARC is an alliance of universities and research libraries that support increased competition in scientific journal publishing. Its membership currently numbers over 170 institutions and library consortia in North America, the U.K., continental Europe and Asia. SPARC is also affiliated with major library organizations in Canada, the U.K. and Ireland, Denmark, Australia and the USA. More information on SPARC is available at www.arl.org/sparc. SPARC is an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries.