NEWS

Oxford University Press Launches Major New Online Platform
for Cross-University Press Monograph Content

Oxford University Press (OUP) is pleased to announce the creation of a groundbreaking online platform for university press monograph content. Having redeveloped the award-winning Oxford Scholarship Online, OUP is launching University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO) and inviting the University Press community to take advantage of a fully enabled XML environment with the cutting edge search and discovery functionality that has marked the on-going success of Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO).

“University Press Scholarship Online represents a convenient, dynamic step forward for ensuring that scholarly content from many venerable presses across the globe is conveniently searchable and accessible via one platform to the academic community worldwide,” notes Tim Barton, Managing Director of Global Academic Publishing for Oxford University Press.

Responding to increased demand for online scholarly content, UPSO streamlines the research process by making disparately published monographs easily accessible, highly discoverable and fully cross-searchable via one online platform. Research that previously would have required users to jump between a variety of books, and disconnected websites can now be concentrated through a single search engine.

First phase of content from participating partner presses include Fordham University Press (Fordham Scholarship Online/FSO); The American University in Cairo Press (Cairo Scholarship Online/CSO); The University Press of Kentucky (Kentucky Scholarship Online/KSO); University Press of Florida (Florida Scholarship Online/FLASO); Hong Kong University Press (Hong Kong Scholarship Online/HKSO). Additional presses are signing up to participate and OUP expects to add their content to UPSO in March 2012. Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh Scholarship Online/ESO) and Policy Press (Policy Press Scholarship Online/PPSO) are just two additional presses planned for the March 2012 update.

Timothy Wright, Chief Executive of Edinburgh University Press, has commented that “the unprecedented speed of change in the electronic publishing environment presents both challenges and significant opportunities for publishers. We are delighted to be working with Oxford University Press and specifically with University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO). They have a great deal of experience of working with a global network of academic institutions, libraries and scholars. This presence will enable Edinburgh to continue to innovate in how we sell our books and journals using a single online platform whilst maintaining our individual branding”.

UPSO’s mission is to create an individually-branded home for monographs from each participating university press just as it has done for Oxford Scholarship Online while allowing highly intuitive tools to deep search across all the content in the program. As such, UPSO will be the premier online research tool—for scholars, teachers, graduate and undergraduate students—and an essential resource for all academic libraries.

Oxford Scholarship Online was launched in 2003 and immediately hailed as “A superior e-book implementation” by Booklist, and “For ease of use, user-friendly design, and quality texts, Oxford Scholarship Online is among the best I have ever used” by Library Journal.

Benefits of UPSO for academics, libraries, and partner presses:

• Provides the highest quality scholarly content across 24 subject areas

• Includes a vast and growing number of titles 5,485 titles will be available at launch, 652 of which are new titles, with abstracts and keywords at both the book and chapter level for each title

• All UPSO content is available in XML, which provides deep tagging and better search results. Content can also be downloaded and saved to PDF

• Is fully cross-referenced and cross-searchable, with clickable citations from bibliographies and footnotes, including OpenURL and DOI-linking support

• Allows users to streamline research through a single online platform

• Can be easily integrated into library systems and updated frequently with new content

• Offers full customer support services as well as flexibility and choice in purchasing models

• Mobile functionality will be available later this year

• Increase discoverability and usage of university press scholarly materials

• Offers university presses unique opportunity to create an XML digital workflow and join a highly successful online scholarship platform, reaching the global academic market at low distribution costs

“OUP has developed this innovative and highly successful service specifically to address digital monographs. We’re the only publisher with a decade of this digital experience under our belt with more than 60% of research libraries now offering their users access to Oxford Scholarship Online,” said Casper Grathwohl, VP, Digital Publisher at Oxford University Press. “The UPSO program builds on this experience by opening the environment to the university press community—a welcome expansion for librarians and users who understand the growing power provided by a post-PDF research solution.”

“I think the timing is right for the UPSO model—over the past year the university press community has delved more deeply into strategic conversations about how to address their digital monograph publishing and we hope that the UPSO program will offer them a solution with a proven track record in an environment that is more flexible than most other offerings that are becoming available. UPSO is ultimately about unlocking the power of the academic monograph, and that singular focus makes it incredibly compelling,” concluded Grathwohl.