EPICentre - Electronic Publishing Innovation Centre

EPICentre is a research group set up to investigate all areas of electronic publishing from the technical aspects and languages of document engineering right through to usability and usage studies of journals, e-books and web sites.

EPICentre has members from Loughborough and Cranfield Universities and the centre is headed by Dr Steve Probetsof the Information Science Department at Loughborough University.

Remit

The subject field to be covered by the group will be electronic publishing in the broadest sense, with an emphasis on scholarly and academic publishing but not excluding other types of publishing. Electronic publishing is defined as the use of electronic networks for the creation, structuring, retrieval and dissemination of organised bodies of information that are intended for use beyond a closed group of users. Web, online and CD-ROM publishing will be covered, as will electronic methods of administration and pre-press leading primarily to printed publications.

Aspects of the field to be covered will include technical, social, psychological, economic, legal and business approaches to the study of electronic publishing.

A major part of the activity of EPICentre will be the pooling of expertise and of information about possible funding sources, leading to the formation of synergistic ad-hoc groups of EPICentre members from one or both Universities who are well equipped to bid for resources that become available.

Activities

The objectives of EPICentre are:

• The encouragement of joint or collaborative research between different members of the group
  
• Publication of research articles and presentations at conferences based on collaborative research work undertaken within EPICentre
  
• The operation of a private e-mail discussion list for members
  
• The operation of a website
  
• The holding of regular meetings to be held either at Loughborough or at Cranfield
  
• The preparation of brochures, articles, conference presentations or other publicity materials to inform others of EPICentre's activities

EPICentre members at Loughborough University

Fytton Rowland, Steve Probets, Cliff McKnight, John Feather, James Dearnley, Charles Oppenheim, Adrienne Muir, Ann O'Brien, Sally Maynard, Anne Morris.

Projects

• Current Projects
  • Registry of Electronic Licences (Oppenheim & Probets). JISC funded.
  • Web Analytics Evaluation (Dearnley).
• Recent Projects
  • UK Scholarly Journals Baseline Report
  • Copyright Knowledge Bank (Oppenheim & Probets). JISC funded.
  • A Delivery, Management and Access Model for E-prints (Rowland).
  • Electronic Books in Public Libraries (Dearnley, McKnight & Morris).
  • RoMEO project (Oppenheim & Probets). JISC funded.
  • Survey on the use of different forms of Scholarly Output (Maynard + Oppenheim). JISC funded.

  Many of these projects have been undertaken in association with other research groups or with external partners.

More Information

More information about the members and work of EPICentre, including current and past research projects, current events and relevant publications can be found on the EPICentre website URL : www.epicentre-research.org

Contacting EPICentre
For further information on the group, its research projects or inquiries concerning research or consultancy, please contact Dr Steve Probets on 01509-228055, e mail : S.G.Probets@lboro.ac.uk