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Dutch company Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher, is becoming a dominant force in the open access repositories sector. Last month, it announced that it had acquired Bepress, a company based in Berkeley, California, whose portfolio includes Digital Commons, a platform used by more than 500 universities and research institutes to manage their institutional repositories, which together comprise more than 2.3 million documents stored on the cloud. The value of the company was not disclosed. Through this acquisition, Elsevier is aiming to strengthen its digital presence and increase the number of customers of its science and technology information analysis services, such as its Research Intelligence solutions and the Scopus journals database, both of which will be connected to Digital Commons and available to its users. Elsevier also used this integrative strategy in 2013, when it bought Mendeley, a popular social network where researchers share articles. Last year, it acquired the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a human and social sciences preprints repository, as well as research data company Plum Analytics. “Bepress has led the way in helping institutions showcase their work. We look forward to doing great things together,” said Oliver Dumon, director of research products, in a statement released by Elsevier.
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