Érudit is a multi-institutional publishing consortium comprising the Université de Montréal, the Université Laval and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Érudit is a non-profit society that offers an innovative model for the promotion and dissemination of research outputs. It forms the “Quebec node” of the Synergies project.
The Érudit platform provides access to several types of documents in the humanities and social sciences, as well as the natural science disciplines: academic journals, e-books, proceedings, theses and other documents and data. A specific editorial process is applied to each type, and a search tool allows all types of documents in the entire collection to be queried, while also presenting results in the various categories.
Érudit was first established in 1998 as a digital publishing site, as a result of initiatives made by the Presses de l'Université de Montréal. During its first phase (1998-1999), it was supported by Fonds FCAR and five journals were made available online. Since then, other journals were welcomed aboard, and their numbers eventually increased to ten. The Université de Montréal then made great strides in instigating various other partners having diverse and complementary experience in publishing to form a consortium. In the Spring of 2001 this consortium was given the mandate of developing a second version of the Érudit platform, which went online at the end of October 2002. This accomplishment was made possible through support provided by the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture and the Fonds de l'autoroute de l'information du Gouvernement du Québec.
Since its inception, the publication expertise developed at Érudit has been based on international standards, thus ensuring the best conditions for the use and preservation of digital documents. All publishing processes are based on XML standards. Journal tagging is based on a datamodel especially designed for journals: the Érudit Article schema.
In April 2008, the third version Érudit's publishing platform was launched, and now provides some of the most advanced services in its field: a trilingual navigation interface (French, English and Spanish), a research tool for four types of material (journals, e-books/proceedings, theses, other documents), search results filtered according to several criteria, author indexes by journal, exporting of search result citations to use in bibliographic management softwares, Z39.50 queries, searching and browsing through the collections of partner platforms, etc.
Érudit publishes and disseminates any scholarly journals, regardless of the publisher. It also serves as a publishing centre for journals supported by the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture. Retrospective digitization is done for more than half of the 67 journals, and at least for a substantial part of their collection. At the demand of journal publishers, Érudit maintained the moving wall principle for filtered access: the last two years of journal publications are available to subscribers. Over 80% of the content is open access while still allowing journals to obtain the revenue they need to ensure the continuation of their publishing projects.
The Érudit platform includes an e-Books and Conference Proceedings zone, with the primary concern of publishing within short deadlines. The Digital Publishing Service for Proceedings permits dissemination in PDF format, as well as offering search services. At the same time Érudit provides an access page structure for the digital publishing of theses from various universities. This zone is the result of initiatives made by universities for this type of document.
The Other Documents and Data section promotes scientific communication by hosting and disseminating documents such as reports and research notes, lectures, communications and other documents that authors and researchers want to make available online (in text, audio or multimedia formats). It is both freely accessible and independent of the journals Érudit publishes.
Érudit's repository is an interinstitutional service that relies on the cooperation of numerous research units. It provides a multi-university network and uses the Open Archives Initiative protocol to enhance and expand the dissemination of hosted documents.
In parallel to the development of the Érudit platform, members of the team wrote a number of studies and communications regarding the challenges involved in the digital publishing of scholarly documentations.
The Consortium Érudit is made up of the following partners:
Érudit is working in cooperation with other platform partners in order to create a network for research results:
Érudit and PERSÉE provide access to their collections through each other's sites, through browsing or through their respective search engines. A search in Érudit allows users to locate and consult articles published in PERSÉE, and vice versa. PERSÉE is a web platform for scientific journals in the humanities and social sciences in France, and was created by the ministère de l'Éducation nationale, de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche. The PERSÉE platform's role is to provide free online access to back files collections of French scientific production. PERSÉE was carried out by a consortium comprising the Université Lumière Lyon 2 (lead institution), the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée - Jean Pouilloux and the Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, in partnership with the École Normale Supérieure (LSH) de Lyon.
Érudit and NRC Research Press have mutualised their collections through either web site, by browsing or, in the near future, by their respective search engines. A search in Érudit will permit authorized users to retrieve articles published in NRC Research Press, and vice versa. NRC Research Press has been publishing scholarly journals since 1929. As part of the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the NRC Research Press publishes 16 journals, monographs, conference presentations, and related publications. A continuing investment in electronic publishing keeps them at the forefront of scientific communications and helps satisfy the needs of their international clients.
In addition to its three main partners, Érudit operations have received financial participation and support from the:
Érudit has formed an alliance with about fifty Canadian and French publishers:
To view the licenses and policy on use of texts, including the Érudit Open Source license, go to "Licences and Policies" page.
To view various versions of the Érudit Article Data Model (DTD and Schema), and all technical documentation including data dictionary, go to "Technical Documentation" page.
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