This is the final report for the Atlantic Philanthropies funded study, "Creating an Open Access Paradigm for Scholarly Publishing" (October 2002 thru June 2006). The DSpace digital repository, created at the MIT library, was implemented at Cornell University as one of the initial DSpace sites. We explored its usage as a repository and as a publishing distribution platform for low-cost (royalty-free) open access publishing that encompasses all disciplines and is openly accessible worldwide. We were especially interested in exploring how the Internet might be used to fundamentally improve communication among universities and with the rest of society. We commissioned some financial studies and held some workshops. We describe some models for lowering costs for university presses, libraries, and the universities that exploit attributes of online publishing that were not feasible with a paper-based model. In particular, we urge a fresh look at the system, not individual campus, level for potential savings.

We explored ways to encourage a shift in the faculty's willingness to effectively utilize this digital repository -- including a shift in emphasis from archiving to include online publishing. We published traditional materials, but also gave strong emphasis to multimedia materials as an alternative to print volumes that are expensive for publishing limited audience content. Video, until quite recently, has been very expensive, but that barrier can now be easily overcome. To encourage faculty participation we provided print-on-demand perfect binding and DVDs as a higher resolution (but more expensive and requiring a user fee) service. Eventually, we think, there will be a growing acceptance by faculty for online searching and browsing, with a need only for paying a user fee only for intensively used materials or otherwise for higher resolution presentations. Our content can be found at: http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/index.jsp http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/62 http://ifup.cit.cornell.edu