(8 May 2017) The Center for Open Science (COS) is pleased to announce that it has added another branded service to its open source preprints service, OSF Preprints. The new service, called LawArXiv, provides free, open access, open source archives for legal research. LawArXiv is an open access legal repository supported and maintained by members of the scholarly legal community. The repository was developed by three non-profit membership organizations and an academic lead institution:
- Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA)
- Mid-American Law Library Consortium (MALLCO)
- NELLCO Law Library Consortium Inc. (NELLCO)
- Cornell Law Library
“LIPA, MALLCO, and NELLCO are excited to be collaborators on the LawArXiv project. Unfettered access to scholarship contributes to the greater pool of knowledge and promotes access to justice.” Margaret Maes, LIPA Executive Director.
“Our partnership in the LawArxiv project is a reflection of Cornell Law School’s deep and enduring commitment to open access principles, and the availability of legal information to all.” Femi Cadmus, Edward Cornell Law Librarian.
The Center for Open Science serves as the technology partner and hosts LawArXiv through the Open Science Framework. Administrative and leadership support is provided in partnership with the Cornell Law Library. LawArXiv is built on COS’s flagship platform, the Open Science Framework, which helps researchers design and manage their project workflow, data storage, DOIs, and collaboration. COS has leveraged that platform to help those researchers discover new research as it happens and to receive quick feedback on their own research prior to publication.
The branded preprints platform from COS provides organizations that want to launch their own preprints service an easy, robust, and stable solution. The platform can be configured to match their brand, editorial focus, licensing requirements, and taxonomy. Once configured, a new service can be up and indexing new preprints in a matter of days. COS has already created branded services in agriculture, psychology, sociology, research and engineering and has indexed over 2 million preprints.
“Many discipline-focused communities are motivated to improve access and control of research outputs, and preprints can significantly foster this” said Matt Spitzer, COS’s Community Manager. “The interest on the part of our new partners to launch their own open preprints services only confirms this trend, and we are thrilled to provide LawArXiv with a free and open source platform that enhances that access.”
About Center for Open Science
The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit technology startup founded in 2013 with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The Open Science Framework (OSF), COS’s flagship product, is a web application that connects and supports the research workflow, enabling scientists to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their research. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data. Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.
About LawArXiv
LawArXiv, an open access legal repository, aims to empower the scholarly legal community and champion open access principles by ensuring community stewardship of legal scholarship. In support of its mission, LawArXiv will provide a platform that is owned and maintained by members of the scholarly legal community. This non-profit collaboration will meet the current and changing needs of legal scholars and member institutions, provide open access to legal scholarship, and develop and execute a sustainable and flexible scholarly publication environment.
The announcement in full is here.
