February 14, 2005. The Berkeley Electronic Press today announced that the eScholarship Repository, a University of California's digital collection powered by Berkeley Electronic Press technology, has reached a major milestone. The Repository, which houses a variety of scholarly materials produced under the auspices of University of California research units, centers, and departments, has logged its 1,000,000th full-text download. It is believed to be the first institutional repository to have reached this threshold.
Launched in April, 2002, and sponsored jointly by the UC Office of the President and the California Digital Library (CDL), the eScholarship Repository (http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/) has rapidly become an important hub for authors and researchers alike. This milestone demonstrates both the Repository's growing importance within the scholarly community and the power of Berkeley Electronic Press technology.
"Reaching the one million full-text download mark is a remarkable achievement," states Greg Tananbaum, President of The Berkeley Electronic Press. "It demonstrates that institutional repositories are providing valuable and desirable information both to scholars within academia and to the public at large. The fact that 98% of readership comes from outside of the University of California clearly demonstrates how institutional repositories can connect scholarship with scholars in amazing ways."
The Berkeley Electronic Press provides Internet-based tools for the submission, processing, and posting of materials to the eScholarship Repository. In addition to simplifying the depositing of papers, this unique technology allows readers, at no charge, to discover and view relevant research by topic, author, or sponsoring research department with the site's straightforward organization and search tools. The system also allows users to sign up for a service alerting them to new content, tailored to their unique interests.
Included within the eScholarship Repository are a number of peer-reviewed publications, working papers, monographs, and other scholarly materials. The Berkeley Electronic Press system creates custom workflows for each participating unit, allowing for the easy commingling of publication types and editorial or administrative oversight.
The same technology used to power the eScholarship Repository drives the Digital Commons institutional repository platform, marketed by ProQuest Information & Learning. Schools using Digital Commons include the University of Pennsylvania, Boston College, Cornell, UTEP, Dickinson, and Trinity University.
About The Berkeley Electronic Press
Three University of California, Berkeley, professors founded the Berkeley Electronic Press in 1999. As scholarly authors and editors themselves, they realized that scholarly publication was plagued by difficulties. Characterized by slow time to market, typesetting gaffes, an inequitable revenue split between contributor and publisher, and exorbitant subscription rates, the scholarly journal system was broken. The Berkeley Electronic Press develops Internet-based software to address these problems. In addition to licensing these tools, The Berkeley Electronic Press publishes its own slate of electronic journals.
