We are very happy to announce that, starting with the release of Digital Commons version 7.8 tomorrow, bepress is doing away with one-time set-up fees for journals. If your institution has a full, standard Digital Commons license, you’ll now be able to publish as many journals as you like.
Why now?
This change has been a long time in the making. What started as an experiment a decade ago – libraries publishing journals – has now become a cornerstone of library institutional repository programs. And in fact, the Digital Commons community has led and inspired the entire library community in this regard. Many of you are publishing ten or more journals, and some of you are pushing twenty!
Journals per institution on Digital Commons as of December 2013
When we looked at this chart, we couldn’t help but wonder whether many more of you also wanted to grow, but were slowed down by the one-time journal set-up fee. Maybe you were turning away new journals, or asking editors to wait. Digital Commons is all about being able to say “yes,” and now you will be able to say “yes” to a new journal without any reservations.
What changed to make it possible?
We’ve wanted to offer truly unlimited journals for a very long time, and it’s finally become possible due to the work of our talented Consulting Services and development teams. After analyzing the requirements of editors and our journal building workflows, they came up with more than a dozen improvements in the scalability of our infrastructure, focusing in particular on our ability to better support customizations. Journals are the most heavily customized publications on Digital Commons, with each editor having their own specific vision for how the journals should be set up. Being able to support journal customizations and their professional design during software releases and platform upgrades is a major part of our commitment to you, and providing this service for any number of journals without additional, costly manual work on our end is finally within reach.
We’re so excited to see how your programs will grow in the coming years!
And, if you have any questions about this new development, please don’t hesitate to contact your Consulting Services Representative.