UPScope

A planning grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

UPScope expands the network

UPScope is the working title of an AAUP planning grant to develop a platform enabled by natural language full-text search and discovery of high quality, peer-reviewed books published by AAUP member presses.• Creates a network between the texts published by AAUP

member presses• Natural language search facilitates:

• crosses disciplinary silos• results free of bias based on commercial factors (i.e. advertising)

• Links texts into the networks of scholars

Inspired by AcademyScope

Raison d’etre: Monograph Discovery

Monograph discovery is not optimal for humanities research

Phrases and key words carry multiple meanings

Ideas across disciplines have different names

Why did we do this:

Improve discovery, visibility, and usage of AAUP member press books

Inference Engines: semantic search• An inference engine reads the text of the books and identifies

the concepts and key phrases within the tests

• Maps the books against one another based on those common key phrases/key words, creating idea pathways

Testing of Inference Engines• 200 files used to test inference engines

• Proved the files & metadata have today will work with these engines

Governance Structurefor the planning grantTwo Advisory Councils:• Executive Advisory Council• Technical Advisory Council

The two councils split into nine working groups:• Semantic Tech Evaluation• Scholar as customer• Up content analysis• Access models and fulfillment• Identifiers & metadata standards• Reimagine Curation• Aggregator Interfaces• Library as customer• AAUP member communication

Outreach to the community

• Surveyed AAUP member presses• Libraries• Scholarly Societies• Individual Scholars• Technology Companies• Inference Engine Developers

Business Modeling

Members of the advisory council created potential business model projections for:

book salesdiscovery service salesopen access hosting feesresearch services to scholars

Member Content Survey166,000 digital book files exist from 104 reporting AAUP member presses. Most are PDF

Presses publish more than 10,000 new titles a year

Next Steps• Drafting a Proof of Concept project proposal to submit to the

Mellon Foundation

• Core goals of proof of concept1. Ingest files metadata from presses2. Develop the inference engine (discovery tool)3. Validating scholars will use it

Questions?

Thank you!