Scholar Services, a program of Information Services (KU Libraries and Information Technology), has made two KU-based scholarly journals freely available online to readers and researchers throughout the world, thanks to a new program designed to support the online distribution of campus publications.
Biodiversity Informatics and back-issues of Latin American Theater Review are now freely available at http://journals.ku.edu.
Brian Rosenblum, scholarly digital initiatives librarian at KU, said the online publication of both journals will contribute to the worldwide exchange of research and scholarship, and will raise the visibility of scholarship being published at KU.
“Supporting open access to this content is a way of breaking down some of the barriers to getting this material to as many people as possible, and is an example of the evolving role for academic libraries in delivering content to users,” said Rosenblum.
Biodiversity Informatics is an electronic journal focusing on the analysis of information regarding biological diversity. It was launched in 2004 by Editor A. Townsend Peterson, curator of ornithology at KU’s Natural History Museum and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, along with Jorge Soberón and David Vieglais, senior scientists in the Biodiversity Research Center. As an open access, electronic journal, the publication is freely available to users worldwide. Because there is no print version, Biodiversity Informatics can publish articles as soon as editing is complete, making them available to readers almost immediately. Biodiversity Informatics’ partnership with Scholar Services will allow IT professionals to oversee the technical aspects of publishing the journal, ensuring that the journal has a permanent location on the Web and providing oversight for long-term access and preservation, allowing editors to focus on developing content for the journal.
“We are very pleased that Biodiversity Informatics will now be supported by Scholar Services,” said Peterson. “This is a small, highly specialized, startup journal that has been run for a number of years out of the Biodiversity Research Center and has always been a bit hand-to-mouth. Now, with the backing of Scholar Services, we foresee the journal transforming into a more permanent, professional forum for discussions in an emerging field.”
Latin American Theatre Review (LATR) is published twice per year by KU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center of Latin American Studies. Founded in 1967 and edited for 40 years by Professor Emeritus George Woodyard, LATR covers all aspects of Latina/o and Latin American theatre and performance and has grown to be one of the premiere scholarly journals in its field. The new online version of LATR will provide free access to the entire back-run up to 2002, which includes over 1,000 scholarly articles, news items, theater schedules and book and performance reviews. Back issues will continue to be added to the archive as new issues are published.
“One of the goals of digitizing the Latin American Theatre Review is to increase access, particularly in the countries of Latin America, where many readers, scholars and writers do not have convenient access to it,” said Stuart Day, KU associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, and the journal’s current editor.
With the launch of these two journals, Scholar Services is poised to provide increasing support for scholarly publishing. KU ScholarWorks, KU’s institutional repository, already hosts back issues of other KU-based publications, including Slovene Linguistic Studies and Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, and several other publications are in the early stages of preparation.
“We know there is a lot of scholarly content being created at KU in the form of journals, monographs, conference presentations. Our goal is to help make this content available online in a manner that promotes increased visibility and access, and ensures long-term stewardship of the materials,” said Rosenblum.
KU’s Digital Publishing Services provides support to the KU community for the design, management and distribution of online publications, including journals, conference proceedings, monographs, and other scholarly content. Digital Publishing Services support a variety of software platforms to publish content in different formats, and can assist with moving traditional journal and monograph content to an online environment, as well as with publishing "born-digital" scholarship designed specifically for online publication. DPS also offer tools to help manage and streamline the production and editorial work involved in producing scholarly journals.
For more information about Digital Publishing Services, visit http://kudiglib.ku.edu/epublishing.shtml.
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Kansas
