Cambridge University Press Announces Upcoming Release of an An Integrated eBook Platform University Publishing Online

Full Text News Release:

Cambridge University Press has announced that it will be launching a new integrated eBook and digital content platform for other academic publishers, called University Publishing Online.

From October 2011, University Publishing Online will provide libraries with eBooks and related database products from a variety of academic publishers worldwide.

Boydell & Brewer, Liverpool University Press, the Mathematical Association of America, and Foundation Books, based in India, are the first publishers to join the new site. Announcements of further partners will be made in coming weeks.

The new platform means that customers will be able to access important academic works and research from various publishers, in one place, and it is based on the ‘Cambridge Books Online’ eBook delivery platform.

Cambridge Books Online offers access to thousands of front and backlist PDF titles in a fully searchable environment. The site includes dynamic content and features, with frequent addition of new titles. It also features comprehensive library support tools, including downloadable machine-readable cataloguing (MARC) records, usage reports plus access and authentication methods.

Functionality on the site includes hyperlinked references and personalisation features, as well as enhanced discoverability tools. Two functionality upgrades take place every year, ensuring the site is consistently developing according to its users’ needs.

Libraries can acquire a wide range of subject-based collections or can choose to make an individually customised selection of titles from the 12,000 currently on offer. Institutions in over 30 countries have purchased eBooks from Cambridge Books Online since its launch in 2010, and new customers are being added each week.

The Cambridge Books Online platform already incorporates a powerful faceted-search tool across all scholarly books and journals issued by Cambridge; and as the lists of other leading publishers are added to these, University Publishing Online will become one of the largest and most significant repositories of digital academic material in the world.

Two purchasing plans for University Publishing Online will be available, each involving multi-user concurrent access and minimal digital rights management (DRM): customers will be able to buy content once and then own continuing access, or subscribe annually with a subscribe-to-buy facility.

Dr Andrew Brown, Director of Academic Publishing at Cambridge University Press, said: “A key concept of University Publishing Online is to preserve the individual identity of each of its publishing partners, as every academic press makes a unique contribution to the world of scholarship through its own particular process of selecting, editing and presenting material. By respecting these differences, while offering the contributions of all on a single platform with a highly sophisticated common search engine, University Publishing Online will set new standards for the integration of key academic content with a user-friendly interface and customer-oriented purchasing models of unrivalled flexibility.”

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Open Access, Publishing, Reports