Overview
Since 2000, GSW has pursued a vision to make earth science research information easily and economically available via the internet. Since then, GSW has evolved into a highly-regarded scientific research collaborative. Today, GSW delivers integrated access to 40 online journals (110,000+ articles) from 26 pre-eminent publishers, enhanced with specialized tools developed in partnership with Google Maps™ and AGI’s GeoRef, and serves millions of users each year in 40 countries worldwide.
GSW is a nonprofit organization that is governed by a Board of Directors and advised by an Advisory Council of participating publishers. GSW publishers may include nonprofit scientific societies or organizations, university presses, or commercial publishers agreeing to work within the GSW framework. GSW’s founding publishers are among the oldest and largest not-for-profit geoscience organizations in the world, with a long history of successful publication of basic and applied research results and public education materials.
Benefits
Scientific publishers have a mission to disseminate science as broadly as possible. GSW helps publishers meet their mission-based objectives by maximizing the discovery and use of their content and by supporting their success in a changing digital landscape.
A key benefit of GSW, as a collaborative, nonprofit organization, is the capacity to develop advantages and economies of scale that can be extended to societies, libraries, instructors, and researchers. GSW also plays an important leadership role by exploring and developing new technologies that meet evolving customer needs. We are much more than a content hosting service. As an aggregation of top-tier, specialized content integrated with a superb indexing service, GSW has unique opportunities to identify and develop powerful services, which may ensure the extensibility of our participants’ scientific content.
Comments from our library customers:
GSW is essential
Our faculty demand it
Very easy to use
Compiles highly important earth science resources in one location/database
Librarians value the range of journals and the way in which articles can be downloaded quickly all from one source
Key benefits for GSW publishers:
Mission-driven commitment, as a nonprofit collaborative, to the advancement of the study of geoscience
Subject-matter expertise, maximized via unique integration with AGI’s GeoRef abstracting and indexing service
Larger digital content footprint for increased visibility, end-user content discovery, and more usage
Cross-marketing opportunities, including cooperative ad purchases, and shared exhibit space
Sales representation and global consortia sales opportunities unavailable to individual publishers
Reduced, volume-based pricing for technology services
Access to technology expertise and consultation
New technology incubation services
Requirements
A society or other independent publisher, including the Founding Organizations, seeking to make journals available through GeoScienceWorld must:
Meet GSW’s standards for inclusion (i.e., relevance, quality, etc.);
Sign a non-exclusive electronic licensing agreement with GSW with an initial term of three years;
Supply a digital version of its journal(s) on a timely basis in a format specified by GSW, for which a publisher can either produce the electronic file on its own, have a GSW-approved vendor do so, or provide the links to existing posted files; and,
Be a member of the Publishers International Linking Association for CrossRef participation (enabling article links), or permit GSW to enroll them.
Each participating publisher is encouraged, but not required, to appoint a representative to the Advisory Council that elects the GSW Board of Directors and acts as a communication link between GSW and participating organizations, and to offer subscriptions to their printed journals to GSW’s online subscribers at a reduced price.
For more information contact:
gswinfo@geoscienceworld.org
4220 King St.
Alexandria, VA 22302
+1 800.341.1851 (Toll Free)
+1 703.671.4791 (USA)