The University of California announced this week that its
widely used eScholarship Repository surpassed the five-million mark for
full-text downloads of its open access scholarly content.

This milestone reflects the impressive adoption and usage
rate the repository has seen since its inception in 2002, with UC academic
units and departments from its 10 campuses publishing or depositing more than
20,000 papers and works.

The repository houses a broad range of scholarly content and
provides a publishing platform for pre-prints, post-prints, peer-reviewed
articles, edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals.

The usage rate of these materials has grown exponentially in
the past five years and now often exceeds 55,000 full-text downloads per week.

The eScholarship Repository represents one of the
university’s most successful and sustained efforts to improve and offer
innovative alternatives to the scholarly publishing system, which struggles to
serve the needs and requirements of the academic community.

“We’re very excited about the uptake and use of the
eScholarship Repository at the University of California,” said Catherine
Candee, executive director of strategic publishing and broadcast services at UC
Office of the President, in a press release. “Our open access publishing
platform represents a critical component of UC’s broader effort to strengthen
university-based publishing services and integrate them into the research,
teaching and public service mission of the university.”