Building a Federated, Online Social Sciences and Humanities Database of Journals and Research Communication: A Canadian Initiative

Synergies is an emerging online Canadian publishing project in the social sciences and humanities that builds on a group of online publishing initiatives that have emerged over the last decade. It involves a new partnership between libraries and journals wherein journals bring content and libraries (or IT units within universities) bring technological infrastructure consisting of maintained and secure hardware and software as well as associated services to users. Part 1 of the paper describes various initiatives and what they are bringing to the project. Part 2 reports on a survey undertaken of the state of SSH journal publishing in Canada. It focuses on attitudes to online publishing and the financial feasibility of online publishing with various models of access. Part 3 reports on the state of cultural magazine publishing and the attitudes of cultural magazines publishers to the possibility of providing online access to back issues. The paper concludes with a description of how and where the project sought resources, how they are structured, and the current state of the project