FOR RELEASE: Nov. 6, 2006
Contact: Nicola Pytell
Phone: (607) 254-6236
Cell: (607) 351-3548
nwp2@cornell.edu
Cornell and Penn State give libraries publishing power with release of
DPubS software
ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University Library and Penn State University Libraries and Press, leaders in developing innovative scholarly communication models, announce the release of new electronic publishing software that will expand opportunities for creative communications among scholars worldwide.
DPubS (Digital Publishing System) supports change in scholarly publishing by giving academic libraries and their partners the means to organize and disseminate scholarly communications electronically. DPubS is now available free for download at <dpubs.org>.
“DPubS will facilitate the dissemination of scholarship. It's a tool that will support libraries, presses, and scholarly societies in bringing publications online in a flexible array of options,” said Cornell University Librarian Sarah E. Thomas. “We have been able to provide an open-source tool that can serve as a catalyst for change in the way scholars communicate about their work.”
Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, DPubS was developed by the academic library community for libraries and not-for-profit publishers. As libraries move into scholarly publishing and the dominant publishing model becomes electronic, DPubS provides a powerful and flexible platform for the delivery of journals, conference proceedings, and books. DPubS will help libraries build publishing programs and manage the dissemination of an expanding number of scholarly publications.
“For DPubS to have the impact we want, it is important to make it available to a wide array of institutions within higher education,” said Nancy L. Eaton, Dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications at Penn State University. “Releasing it as open source is key to that objective.”
DPubS is uniquely customizable. It is based on an open-services architecture that lends itself well to enhancements and extensions made by an open-source community. It comes ready to publish journals, conference proceedings, and books, and can be configured to deliver and accept content in virtually any format. In addition, the software system includes administrative management tools for non-technical staff and supports both open-access and subscription-based publications. Future releases of DPubS will add editorial management tools to assist in the peer review process.
DPubS is written in Perl, runs on Solaris and Linux systems, and uses commonly available open-source software. The system has a flexible XML/XSLT driven user interface, allowing easy customization of a publication’s Web presence, and it is OAI-PMH 2.0 compatible. If desired, DPubS can utilize Fedora as an underlying repository. Similar support for DSpace is being investigated.
Some examples of DPubS-supported publications include Cornell’s Project Euclid (projecteuclid.org); Medieval Philosophy and Theology, formerly published by the Cambridge University Press (cip.cornell.edu/mpat); Indonesia, published by Cornell University’s Southeast Asia Program (cip.cornell.edu/Indonesia); and Pennsylvania History, published by Penn State University (dpubs.libraries.psu.edu).
To learn more about DPubS, visit dpubs.org or contact David Ruddy at <dwr4@cornell.edu>.
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