Open Access Electronic Publishing Services in Academic Libraries: The case study of University of Patras

• Main Authors: Gkogkou, Despoina, Georgiou, Panos, Tsakonas, Giannis
• Other Authors: Γκόγκου, Δέσποινα
• Format: Conference (paper)
• Language: Greek
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Electronic publishing; Open Access; Greece; Academic libraries; Ηλεκτρονική δημοσίευση; Ανοικτή πρόσβαση; Ελλάδα; Ακαδημαϊκές βιβλιοθήκες

Open Access to scientific information is a major revolution that challenges traditional publishing structures. The initiatives are mainly supported by advances in information technology; however, no major shift could be feasible without the support of information organizations, like libraries. In many contexts, mainly academic, libraries have undertaken the responsibility of disseminating the concept of Open Access and beyond the common promotional practices they have engaged into electronic publishing activities to facilitate Open Access publishing schemes. The Library & Information Center (LIC) of the University of Patras (UoP), Greece, has been playing an active role in promoting Open Access in Greece the last years through many activities, including electronic publishing. Since 2007, LIC has been experimenting with OA publishing practices and tools within the framework of various R&D projects. Two out of the major results of these efforts are: - “Pasithee” (xantho.lis.upatras.gr/pasithee/), the e-publishing platform of scientific journals. - “Dexameni” (xantho.lis.upatras.gr/dexameni/), a digital archive for Greek scholarly journals that stores the back files of printed scientific journals. Both platforms are hosting journals from the field of Humanities and Social Sciences. The electronic publishing program of LIC however is open and currently there are negotiations with more publishers and editorial teams from various scientific disciplines to host their journals in LIC’s services accordingly. The two platforms are based on OJS-Open Journal Systems e-publishing software. In this paper we discuss on the key technical and managerial issues that were addressed during the development and operation phases, the services and procedures that were adopted to support these phases and the legal issues and problems that were raised from working together with publishers, editors and authors. We also present the future plans for improving and upgrading our e-publishing services in an integrated institutional platform to cover all kinds of publications and data types (monographs, conference proceedings, teaching material, bulletins, magazines etc.). In this presentation, a significant part is dedicating on the exhibition of the Directory of Greek Digital Resources (www.lis.upatras.gr/Libworld/collections/search.php), which is a pilot infrastructure developed by LIC, that indexes and presents digital publishing initiatives in Greece and aims to become a formal registry for Greek scientific resources in digital format.