One of the most urgent tasks of the ODSP is to build the necessary technical infrastructure for moving scholarship- journals, monographs, and conference proceeding- to a digital environment. Already in place are a robust network infrastructure and a suite of software on the library platform for newspaper, images, and monographs. Journal and proceedings software is under development in a joint project with Cornell University, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, based on Cornell's innovative publishing software, DPubS (Digital Publishing System).
DPubS is an open-source electronic publishing platform designed to enable new models for scholarly communication and academic publishing. Originally created to support cost-efficient distribution of serial literature in mathematics and statistics, DPubS is being re-engineered for general-purpose publishing of scholarly literature in diverse fields. It will support peer review, extensive administrative functionality, and will provide interoperability with open source repository systems such are FEDORA and DSpace.
Current projects of the ODSP include:
The Pennsylvania Journal Collections Using DPubS, ODSP has created a complete online archive of the back issues of Pennsylvania History, the official journal of the Pennsylvania Historical Association (PHA). Next ODSP is working with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to create a similiar archive for The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Digitizing these important resources for the study of Pennsylvania 's past complements the Libraries' already strong collection of online resources known as PA's Past. The next step is to utilize DPubS in migrating the full journal publishing process of Pennsylvania History—including refereeing, editing, and production—to a digital environment.
Penn State Romance Studies An online series in Romance languages and literatures has been launched in collaboration with the Department of French and Francophone Studies and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. This series, a successor to a print monograph series published by the Press from 1991-2003, will publish monographs electronically and by print-on-demand.
Metalmark Books ODSP is pleased to introduce Metalmark Books, a joint imprint of the Press and Libraries. Books published under this imprint are selected from the collections of the University Libraries. They may be viewed online or ordered as POD paperbacks. Initially, books published under the Metalmark imprint will be chosen from the Libraries' extensive Pennsylvania holdings. Over time, the scope will broaden to include other significant out-of-print titles.
Proceedings DPubS software is being developed to provide a viable electronic publishing outlet for conference proceedings in a range of fields. A pilot project is underway with the Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN) to digitize all past and future volumes of its Annual Conference Proceedings. Development of such conference proceedings software has great potential for use across university communities like Penn State, which host numerous academic conferences each year and yet lack an effective and cost-efficient means of publishing and archiving the fruits of the research.
Online Print-on-Demand Access to the Press's Backlist The Penn State Press has digitized a large share of its backlist of titles in an effort to reduce warehouse inventory and capitalize on the benefits of print-on-demand (POD) technology. The Press and the Libraries have joined forces in this effort by making many of these titles available online as part of the Libraries' growing e-book collections.
