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Érudit

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Overview

Érudit is a publishing platform for scholarly and cultural journals, books, proceedings, theses, documents, and data developed by a nonprofit Canadian publishing consortium founded in 1998. Archival runs of journal publications published prior to a moving wall of current content are available through open access, while the remainder is available through subscription.

Provider: 
Érudit Consortium [1]
Posted: 
Apr 6, 2012 4:37pm
Updated: 
Nov 24, 2021 9:41am
Source
CRL reviews are based on independent research. Information is researched by CRL staff and other specialists at CRL libraries. See CRL Review for additional source notes.
Details

Collection Content

Subject Areas: 
Arts and Humanities
Health and Life Sciences
Science, Engineering and Technology
Social Sciences
Resource Types: 
Dissertations
Electronic books
Electronic journals
Major Languages: 
French
English
Direct from Publisher - Denotes data sourced directly from publisher
Content Details: 
Geographic coverageCanada (60%), Europe, Americas, Africa, Asia
Chronological coveragesome journals from 1930s; majority from the 1950s/1960s
Content types journals, ebooks, reports, data sets
Source formats digital
Total titlesc. 175 (plus 3,000 reports)
Total pages142,815 articles
Digital collection launch date1998
Update frequency weekly
Collection ongoingY
Completion dateNA
Available supplements NA

Specifications

Metadata: 
MARC records availableY
Creator of MARC recordsNA
Structural metadata exposed anywhere?Y
Subject authorities usedNA
Name authorities usedNA
Technical Platform: 
Browser compatibilityChrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Explorer &+
Authentication optionsIP address recognition
Archiving solution – master filesNA
Archiving solution – derivative filesNA
Availability in web discovery toolsY
Open URL targetY
Federated searching, z39.50Y
Local host optionN
Usage statisticsY
Interface Tools: 
Full text displayedY
Page imagesY
Color imagesY (80% of the cultural collection)
Search full textY
Advanced searchY
Search within resultsY
Limit results by dates and/or document typesY
Display highlighted search termsY
Display snippet -- search term in contextN
Relevance sortingY
Save searchesN
Download PDFY
Download HTMLY
Print pageY
Print full documentY
Export citationsY
Annotation toolsN
Cross-product searchingNA
ILLN
Restrictions on useN

Terms and Provider Details

Terms: 
Options
Subscription optionY
Purchase optionN
Multiple year payments optionNA
Hosting chargesN
List of purchasers availableN
Sample license availableN
MARC records purchase feeN
Price tier basisNA
Provider: 
Érudit Consortium [1]
Website: 
http://www.erudit.org [2]
Main Address: 
Pavillon 3744 Jean-Brillant Street, Bureau 6500, BRDV-CEN-R
C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville
Montreal, QC H3C 3J7
Canada
CRL Review
Collection Content: 

Érudit is a publishing platform for scholarly and cultural journals, books, proceedings, theses, documents, and data developed by a nonprofit Canadian publishing consortium founded in 1998. Archival runs of journal publications published prior to a moving wall of current content are available through open access, while the remainder is available through subscription.

The original partnership was formed by the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and Université du Quebec a Montréal. Currently 150 publishers participate, including many research institutes. The organizers note a broad goal: “Focusing on the dissemination of French-language Canadian journals in the humanities and social sciences, Érudit also includes journals in the natural sciences, as well as bilingual and English titles.”

Journals are a strong component of the content offered, totaling 111 mostly scholarly and some cultural titles including a broad subject range: humanities and social sciences (89 titles); law and political science (10); economics and management (5); and life sciences (13). The journals are peer reviewed. The majority of the articles published (60%) are from Canadian sources. The access model, combining subscription materials with open access content, is very interesting. The moving wall maintains a two-year subscription basis for scholarly journals and three-year restricted access for cultural magazines.

There is a small (just over twenty) collection of ebooks  from various Canadian university presses and learned societies. The subjects of the ebooks, while primarily in the social sciences, include natural science topics such as proceedings of a biotechnology conference. The ebooks are presented in various formats according to what has been provided by the participating publishers. Formats include PDF, HTML, Microsoft ereader, and Open eBook, but not all formats are available for each title.

Érudit also provides a “Documents and Data Repository” to host reports, preprints, and raw data. There are currently just over 3,000 documents on file.

Delivery: 

The interface is available in three languages: French, English, and Spanish. The basic search function is quite straightforward, but also offers several flexible features. Results can be sorted by relevance or format of the item. Search results can be filtered by several facets including date, language, and type of publication. Unlimited downloading is allowed, which is an advantage.

One potentially confusing effect is the wide subject range, which can yield scholarly content in the social sciences or biotechnology as well as cultural commentary. It would be useful to limit searches to particular subject areas in addition to publication types. By contrast, the CAIRN portal of French publications has specific subject collection divisions, or “bouquets”. (CAIRN also offers more journals: 256 versus the current 111 titles from Érudit).

Discoverability is supported in several ways, such as permanent urls for all articles and MARC records for the ebooks. The document repository is based on the popular DSpace platform and uses Open Archives Initiative protocol for metadata dissemination; Érudit now also provides metadata to Primo and Primo Central web scale discovery tools.

Terms: 

Bundled subscriptions are available with discounts for consortiums. Érudit supports an open model with more than 90% of the content currently available without restriction. Nearly 75% of subscription revenue is passed back to the journal publishers.

Strengths and Weaknesses: 

This user-friendly platform built on open standards should continue to be very accessible and viable as it expands content, even though the content is only moderate currently. The commitment to integrating open access content, apparently with seamless integration, is well suited to its targeted scholarly and cultural community audiences. At the same time, this collection on its own does not seem to form a comprehensive destination for scholarly content. Holdings are spread rather thin across an unusual combination of humanities, social science, and technical subjects. In fact, Érudit's greatest strength seems to be as a standards-based platform prepared to host a variety of digital publishing. By enabling discovery of metadata in web scale tools and open archives harvesting, the resource could provide valuable supplementary content primarily in the French language.

Reviewers: 

Center for Research Libraries

  • Virginia Kerr - Digital Program Manager

Sources

Sources for this review include information publicly posted or obtained directly from the publisher; data collected by CRL staff and specialists at CRL libraries; and examination of the digital collection when possible. Other sources are noted where cited. CRL continues to gather additional information on this resource and to solicit critical assessment.
CRL Offers & Status
StatusCurrentDescription
CRL FlaggednoPotential interest to CRL community
Offer PendingnoCurrently a candidate for CRL offer
Active OfferyesCurrently offered for purchase or new subscription
Trial AccessnoAvailable for trial
Renewal OffernoCurrently offered for renewal
Expired OffernoPast offers
Inactive / DeclinednoNo longer under consideration by CRL
Reviewed by CRLyesEvaluation available by CRL and community
Special AccessnoMember-only access available for a limited time
The complete offer and activity details for this resource are only available to CRL members.
Appendix
Title List: 
PDF icon List of journals contained in Érudit [3]
PDF icon List of Journals contained in Érudit revised 2017 [4]
PDF icon 2018 Érudit Journal Title List [5]

Community Ratings

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Cost and price-structure: 
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Source URL: https://edesiderata.crl.edu/resources/%C3%A9rudit

Links
[1] https://edesiderata.crl.edu/providers/%C3%A9rudit-consortium
[2] http://www.erudit.org
[3] https://edesiderata.crl.edu/sites/default/files/resource_docs/LicenceAgreement_%C3%89rudit-CRL_Schedule3_Journals-2015.pdf
[4] https://edesiderata.crl.edu/sites/default/files/resource_docs/LicenceAgreement_%C3%89rudit-CRL_Schedule3_2017_Journals.pdf
[5] https://edesiderata.crl.edu/sites/default/files/resource_docs/LicenceAgreement_%C3%89rudit-CRL_Schedule3_2019_JournalsTitleList.pdf