Elsevier Acquires bepress

On Wednesday, August 2nd, news broke that Elsevier had acquired bepress, the company which supports Digital Commons, used as the institutional repository platform for over 500 institutions, predominantly US colleges and universities.

If you're a bepress customer, you're probably very surprised at the news as bepress failed to communicate this development to existing clients before Elsevier made their announcement.

This is certainly not just a health sciences librarianship issue, but advocates of scholarly publication and open access are very concerned about this acquisition. According to the Scholarly Kitchen article, https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/08/02/elsevier-acquires-bepress/:

"Today, Elsevier announces its acquisition of bepress. In a move entirely consistent with its strategy to pivot beyond content licensing to preprints, analytics, workflow, and decision-support, Elsevier is now a major if not the foremost single player in the institutional repository landscape. If successful, and there are some risks, this acquisition will position Elsevier as an increasingly dominant player in preprints, continuing its march to adopt and coopt open access."