University of California Press, the not-for-profit publishing arm of the University of California, and JSTOR, the preservation archive and research platform that is part of the not-for-profit ITHAKA, will work in partnership -- and encourage others to join them -- to make current and historical scholarly content available on a single, integrated platform, to provide a single point of purchase and access for librarians and end users around the world and to ensure its long-term preservation.

Beginning in 2011, current content from all University of California Press journals, including those from scholarly societies, will be hosted on a re-designed JSTOR platform. Faculty and students around the world will be able to access all licensed content on JSTOR -- current issues, back issues, and a growing set of primary source materials from libraries -- easily and seamlessly. JSTOR's nearly 6,000 library participants worldwide will be able to license the press's current journals, either individually or as part of current issue collections, together with JSTOR back issue collections in a single transaction.

"We hear from many publishers about the challenges they face in managing technology and achieving the scale needed to build visibility and a widespread subscription base for their journals." said Michael Spinella, JSTOR managing director. "At the same time libraries and users often find it difficult to license and use high-quality publications scattered among hundreds of different publishers and sites. This new effort is aimed at providing users seamless access to a wide range of current and historical content, while enabling libraries to support their access in more cost-effective ways."

"This should really help publishers, libraries, and the community," added Rebecca Simon, associate director of University of California Press and director of the Journals + Digital publishing division. "UC Press and our society clients will host our publications on a platform where we benefit from rich functionality and wider exposure to libraries than we have today, where JSTOR's millions of users will be able to access the full breadth of our content in a place they visit regularly, and where libraries will be able to add our publications to their holdings with the ease of a single license agreement and invoice from JSTOR, while also being assured of their preservation over time."

The Current Scholarship Program, as the effort will be known, grew out of a long-standing relationship and dialogue between UC Press and JSTOR. They share an understanding of the problems facing scholarly communications and a deep desire to work together to craft a sustainable publishing model that embodies academic values. The effort was also informed by research conducted by Ithaka S+R, the strategy and research arm of ITHAKA, over the past several years and the group's ongoing work to understand and develop sustainable business models and support innovation in the development and dissemination of digital scholarship.

Driving the partnership is an articulated set of principles. They include supporting the broad dissemination of quality scholarship through affordable and sustainable means; promoting fair and transparent pricing; facilitating seamless access to authoritative content of all kinds; and ensuring reliable, long-term preservation and access to scholarship. Organizations -- commercial or non-commercial -- that are interested in joining the program in the future will be encouraged to embrace these fundamentals as well.

"Now is the time for new approaches that will enable the academic community to thrive in the future and to do so in ways and with organizations that understand and support scholarly values," said Lynne Withey, director of University of California Press. "The press's purposes and interests are well aligned with our colleagues at ITHAKA and with those of other scholarly organizations and universities and colleges around the world. We know what we are after, and we are eager to have a greater, lasting impact by working together in ways that neither organization, nor our colleagues in other organizations and institutions, could alone."

In addition to easing access to scholarly content, the redesigned JSTOR platform will also offer enhanced functionality to support the publication of new digital scholarship. Working with Atypon Systems, whose Literatum technology is underlying both JSTOR and UC Press's current platforms, the new platform will provide for the delivery of multimedia content, increased personalization features and new navigation and visualization features. This development will help authors and their publishers take better advantage of technology in the creation, explication and impact of their work.

Visit the Current Scholarship Program's Web site for more information.