The Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

was a unit of the

University Libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

that partnered with researchers and scholars at Columbia to share their research broadly with the world. Using innovative new media and

digital technologies Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. This is in contrast to analog electronics and analog signals. Digital electronic circuits are usually ...

, CDRS sought to empower the Columbia research community with online tools and services to enable them to make the most of scholarly communication,

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

, data sharing, and

preservation Preservation may refer to: Heritage and conservation * Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible * ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...

. CDRS was part of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS).

History

CDRS was created by

James G. Neal James G. Neal is an American librarian, library administrator, and a prominent figure in American and international library associations. In 2022 President Joe Biden appointed him to the National Museum and Library Services Board which advises th ...

in 2007 as part of the reorganization of the Columbia libraries that consolidated the technology-focused divisions (the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, Libraries Digital Program Division, Library Information Technology Office, and the Preservation and Digital Conversion Division) and that also including the establishing of the Copyright Advisory Office. Its founding director was Rebecca Kennison.

Services and Projects

CDRS’ portfolio included support for a range of services and project.Center for Digital Research and Scholarship Website

'

Academic Commons

Now a part of the Libraries' Digital Scholarship unit, Columbia University's institutional repository, called Academic Commons, showcases the research output of Columbia University and enhances the visibility of this work through indexing by

search engines A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

, including

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

. Academic Commons guarantees long-term preservation of files. As an open-access repository, Academic Commons’ contents are universally accessible. Storing work in Academic Commons help researchers meet deposit, archiving, and dissemination stipulations for federal and private funding requirements, such as those by the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

or the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

— and also provides participants with secure, long-term preservation for many digital file types. Academic Commons supports the deposit of a variety of types of content: articles, conference papers, datasets, dissertations, monographs, multimedia creations, pre- and post-prints, technical reports, theses, videos, working papers, etc.

Conference Services

CDRS offered hosting and Web site support for Columbia-based scholarly events by installing and training conference organizers on

Open Conference Systems The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making th ...

platform. An in-house video team captures many of Columbia's academic events on digital video, shoots interviews, digitizes offline audio and video resources, and creates training videos and mini-documentaries.

Publication Services

Columbia-Based Journals

CDRS provided journal hosting support services to Columbia faculty and students who are involved in publishing an online journal. Services offered by CDRS included advice on the digitization of print back issues; platform software hosting, updates, and enhancements; integration of interactive elements such as blogs and wikis; and copyright consulting. CDRS used

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

and

Open Journal Systems Open Journal Systems, also known as OJS, is a free software for the management of peer-reviewed academic journals, created by the Public Knowledge Project, and released under the GNU General Public License. History Open Journal Systems (OJS) wa ...

as their primary platforms. Most of their journals were

law reviews A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also pro ...

, including the '' Columbia Business Law Review''.

Monographs and Publishing Partnerships

CDRS provided support for traditional and new publishing models by working with Columbia-based authors and their editors at

university presses This article lists notable university presses, arranged by country. Associations of university presses are listed afterwards. Entries on this list should be publishing houses associated with one or more academic institutions and have their own ...

and

academic publisher Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally publ ...

s to create enhanced digital publications of their print books. One prize-winning project was ''Dangerous Citizens Online'', a book by

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

professor Neni Panourgiá developed jointly with

Fordham University Press The Fordham University Press is a publishing house, a division of Fordham University, that publishes primarily in the humanities and the social sciences. Fordham University Press was established in 1907 and is headquartered at the university's Lin ...

Wikischolars

CDRS also supported research collaboration by managing a wiki platform called ''Wikischolars'', hosted by

Wikispaces Wikispaces was a wiki hosting service based in San Francisco, California. Launched by Tangient LLC in March 2005, Wikispaces was purchased by Tes Global (formerly TSL Education) in March 2014. It competed with PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, and Google ...

Scholarly Communication Program

Columbia's Scholarly Communication Program was operated by CDRS’ staff. Founded in 2008, the program's aim is to provide education about issues of importance within scholarly communication. Among other activities, the program presents a speaker series called Research Without Borders.Scholarly Communication Program Website

'

References

External links

* *
Academic Commons
*
Dangerous Citizens Online
*
Scholarly Communication Program
*
Wikischolars
''Videos'':
Video highlighting services offered by Center for Digital Research and Scholarship

Video on Academic Commons

Author of ''Dangerous Citizens'' talks about the online book

Video on Wikischolars
{{DEFAULTSORT:Center For Digital Research And Scholarship Columbia University Libraries Library publishing Academic journal online publishing platforms