Laki Sideris, Project Manager, RMIT Publishing [HREF1], PO Box 12058, A'Beckett St, Melbourne, Victoria, 8006, Email: laki.sideris@rmit.edu.au
RMIT Publishing has been publishing Australian databases for over ten years. In recent years, some of these databases have been linked directly to the electronic full text they reference (journal articles etc.). In this way RMIT Publishing has gone beyond merely being a provider of indexes, to being an ePress of full text titles.
Currently in development, Informit Library is a full text database that has been designed specifically to provide access to a wide variety of Australian research content.
It builds on the substantial full text content that RMIT Publishing has available through its Informit service.
There is great demand from Australian libraries, from all sectors, for access to Australian full text content online. While considerable amount of research work is being produced by university departments, organisations and individuals, the material may not be made available electronically. If it is made available electronically, it may be hosted on a web site that may not be able to guarantee persistency. Libraries prefer not to provide access to works on individual websites, but rather offer portals to aggregated material. While some Australian journals may be accessed via large international aggregators, a great deal of valuable Australian research material finds a limited audience.
Informit Library is attempting to provide a unified and intuitive access point to online Australian full text for libraries, organisations and individuals.
Many journals and research works published in Australia are produced by small organisations, whose core business is not publishing. Thus time and resources devoted to publishing are limited. One major consequence is the existence of a variety of formats and styles that range, not only across publishers, but also across the publications of individual publishers. This inconsistency is evident through back issues of journals. For example, a journal may have at one stage been typeset in a word processing program, then later in a page layout program. Many small publishers rarely envisage making the work available online.
The variety of content digitised and published on Informit Library includes journals, books, briefing papers, reports and conference proceedings.
Informit Library's infrastructure attempts to accommodate this disparate range of material and to offer access to them via a single intuitive interface.
The Informit Library full text database will be available through the Informit interface which currently is used by 100% of Australian university library. Libraries will be able to access all of Informit's databases, including Informit Library and "deep link" to individual journals or even to a particular article.
Individuals may purchase subscriptions to individual titles and gain access (including back issues) via a password. Individual articles will be available to non-subscribers on a pay-per-view basis.
Relevant articles and chapters may be located via searching the comprehensive metadata associated with the respective work. In addition to metadata, users may also search the full text of articles. The Informit interface allows for complex queries to be performed using either a command line syntax or through a guided field search.
If users are interested in a particular journal or book, the interface provides clear and intuitive navigational pathways that may be used to browse to a desired article or chapter.
In addition to the Informit interface, the database will also be accessible via federated search interfaces and will be OpenURL enabled.
Once a work is selected, a choice of full text formats are offered depending on the nature of the work. The vast majority of works will be available in both HTML and PDF. Other formats such as PowerPoint or sound files will be offered for download if relevant.
The URL location of all full text will be persistent via DOIs. Thus articles can be confidently cited with a specified address for reference.
Copyright holders and publishers of materials who publish online through Informit Library benefit in a variety of ways. It should be noted that RMIT Publishing does not require exclusivity to the works it publishes on Informit Library. The copyright holder and publisher are free to publish or repurpose their work in any format or with any organisation as they see fit. Further, previously published work, online or otherwise, may also be considered for publication on Informit Library.
Being part of an aggregated service, the work will be made available to libraries who prefer portals to access resources. A proportion of the revenue generated will be distributed back to the content provider as royalties.
Of special note is research content that satisfies DEST APA criteria. Publishing such research in the first instance on Informit Library meets with the commercial publication requirement.
All costs associated with the conversion of electronic files to suitable formats for Informit Library access are met by RMIT Publishing. This makes online publishing a minimal cost exercise without the need for investing in IT development.
Copyright holders have free access to their content online. Thus Informit Library also functions as an archive for their work.
Informit Library currently exists as a standalone website [HREF2] with limited functionality. It is envisaged that the Informit Library database will be accessible via Informit [HREF3] by September 2004.
Content providers are invited to discuss publishing proposals with us [HREF4] . All subscription enquiries may be directed through www.informit.com.au/library.