Sun Microsystems --which is committed to open-source software and open-access educational resources-- is teaming up with an Elsevier subsidiary to "create global digital repositories and preservation technologies which protect critical educational, cultural and historical information." From the press release (October 19):
Sun Microsystems Inc., and Endeavor Information Systems, the leading provider of library management software and a wholly owned subsidiary of Elsevier, today announced an expanded partnership to create global digital repositories and preservation technologies which protect critical educational, cultural and historical information. Institutions such as universities, libraries and museums are tasked with preserving massive, almost incomprehensible amounts of content, as well as ensuring its availability to the appropriate audiences. Without digital preservation, many of the critical materials for research, education and cultural benefit could be lost due to data format changes, media migration, bit loss, application/operating environment shifts and unavailable access....This unique combination of Sun's infrastructure, Endeavor's software and Elsevier's heritage in managing large scale content repositories will enable libraries, universities and museums to more easily and securely convert, store, manage and distribute their informational assets....Representing Endeavor's first step toward achieving its archiving and repository mission is the recent release of ENCompass for Journals Onsite (EJOS), which locally stores and provides access to e-journal content from any publisher in one location. EJOS currently serves many of the largest local repositories of STM journal literature, including the Canada University of Toronto. "EJOS is an essential part of the electronic journal service of the University of Toronto," said Peter Clinton, director, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto. "It offers high-powered search and retrieval capabilities that makes accessing full-text content convenient for students, faculty and researchers at all 20 Ontario universities." "The vast majority of our customers-at least 85 percent-run on Sun operating systems. Over the years, the partnership between Endeavor and Sun has delivered proven security and scalability to meet our customers' needs," said Roland Dietz, president and chief executive officer, Endeavor Information Systems. "The next step in our partnership will create secure, easy-to-use solutions to enable federated access to content and digital repositories. And as we develop future architectures, we will continue to embrace open standards to ensure our customers that new solutions can work with legacy systems, as well as emerging technologies."
(PS: This project is clearly more about long-term preservation than open access. So Elsevier won't compete --yet-- with the OA repository outsourcing services from BMC, Bepress/ProQuest, and Eprints. But digital repositories built for long-term preservation could easily be tweaked to support OA. With a little more work they could support OAI-PMH. If Elsevier took steps in that direction in the coming years, to diversify and hedge its bets, would you be surprised? OA momentum is so strong that I wouldn't be surprised to see any kind of company explore the OA infrastructure and enhancement business.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/23/2005 02:14:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
