Taking the escholarship initiative

Around the world there is growing interest in promoting 'eScholarship' and in achieving open access to scholarly publishing in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. The open access movement challenges the traditional scholarly publishing model that has been in place for hundreds of years. What are the factors that will make eScholarship succeed or fail at the international, national and institutional level? This paper provides an overview of major national and international eScholarship initiatives and identifies and examines critical success factors in the context of a 'total systems' or 'ecological' approach to information management. These factors are then explored from a practical perspective, using the Macquarie University Library's experience with introducing ideas and projects at the local, institutional level - how we are "taking the eScholarship initiative".