Elsevier Buys Berkeley’s Bepress

Kevin o’ Keefe posted the following today

As he says Elsevier are the parent of  Lexis Nexis.

This is an article to scan closely if peer publishing is important in your institution

He writes by way of introduction

Elsevier, a Dutch publisher and one of the world’s major providers of scientific, technical, and medical information, announced this week the acquisition of bepress, formerly the Berkeley Electronic Press, an academic repository and software firm founded by academics in 1999.

Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier, the parent of LexisNexis. Much of the publishing Elsevier sells is authored by professionals and submitted for peer review.

As I understand it, the research and information then published is only available by subscription, including as to any authority who would want to access their own submissions.

Read on at   http://kevin.lexblog.com/2017/08/03/elsevier-acquires-bepress-library-knowledge-community-respond/

Here’s the full press release from Elsevier

https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/corporate/elsevier-acquires-bepress,-a-leading-service-provider-used-by-academic-institutions-to-showcase-their-research

Elsevier acquires bepress, a leading service provider used by academic institutions to showcase their research

Bepress to benefit from Elsevier’s technology and analytics to expand offerings to more institutions, while helping Elsevier drive further adoption of its research data management tools

New York, August 2, 2017

Elsevier, the global information analytics business specializing in science and health, today acquired bepress, a Berkeley, California-based business that helps academic libraries showcase and share their institutions’ research for maximum impact. Founded by three University of California, Berkeley professors in 1999, bepress allows institutions to collect, organize, preserve and disseminate their intellectual output, including preprints, working papers, journals or specific articles, dissertations, theses, conference proceedings and a wide variety of other data.

“Academic institutions want to help researchers share their work, showcase their capabilities and measure how well they’re performing,” said Jean-Gabriel Bankier, bepress CEO. “Now with Elsevier we’ll be stronger and better by applying more technologies and data and analytics capabilities to help more institutions achieve their research goals.”

Showcasing research is critical as competition increases among institutions to secure funding and attract faculty and students. By joining Elsevier, bepress will be better able to address institutions’ promotional needs, such as attracting students, faculty and grants, and preserving research data and outputs. Elsevier’s suite of research products, such as Scopus, Pure, SSRN and SciVal will enhance the breadth and quality of the reach, promotion and impact services bepress delivers to its customers.

“Bepress has led the way in helping institutions showcase their work,” said Olivier Dumon, Managing Director for Research Products at Elsevier. “We are pleased to welcome bepress to Elsevier and look forward to doing great things together.”

The academic community relies on tools to support more efficient and productive work. Bepress’s Digital Commons platform provides cross-repository aggregation and referencing by type of content or author into “Commons” or “Networks.” Bepress currently has content containing over 2 million articles and 100 million annual downloads.

The bepress CEO and employees will continue working with the company in Berkeley, California. The acquisition is effective immediately and terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.

About bepress
Founded by professors in 1999, bepress exists to serve academia. bepress builds hosted solutions that let academic institutions showcase and share their works for maximum impact.

The bepress model is unlimited, cloud-based, and fully hosted, and includes dedicated consulting and support. bepress offers Digital Commons, the leading hosted institutional repository software platform and a comprehensive showcase for everything produced on campus. It is also the only repository that seamlessly integrates with the Expert Gallery Suite, a solution for highlighting faculty and research expertise. Together, Digital Commons and the Expert Gallery Suite let any academic community collect, preserve, and make visible all of their intellectual output and expertise.