The University of Pennsylvania Library System is ending its thirteen-year partnership with academic software firm bepress (formerly Berkeley Electronic Press) and transitioning to an open source platform, a process it has dubbed “Operation Beprexit.” Bepress formerly hosted Penn’s ScholarlyCommons digital repository on the Digital Commons platform. The decision comes in the wake of information analytics company Elsevier’s acquisition of bepress in August, along with several other academic digital repository hosts. Penn Libraries cite Elsevier’s “history of aggressive confidentiality agreements, steep price increases, and opaque data mining processes” as some of the reasons for the split, as well as fears of monopolization by the parent company. Penn is inviting other academic libraries and archives to join the effort and collaborate. Updates on the transition will be posted on the Operation Beprexit blog.
University of Pennsylvania Libraries Explore Open Source Repository Options
The decision to end a thirteen-year partnership with academic software firm bepress comes in the wake of that company's acquisition by information analytics company Elsevier