Welcome to the ASCUS information website
Academic Serials in Communication - Unified System (ASCUS, pronounced "ask us") is an innovative, not-for-profit, full text database of academic publications serving the academic communication field. ASCUS heralds a new relationship between academics, societies, and publishers in which content is widely distributed at low cost.
ASCUS will provide cost-effective access to the principal literature of the communication field using a business model designed to balance:
- the goals of scholars, who wish to provide the broadest possible low-cost access to their scholarship,
- the needs of universities to protect their library budgets,
- the needs of societies and publishers to responsibly fund their publishing programs while avoiding business practices that are anathema to the goals of the academy.
A not-for-profit, society-governed enterprise, ASCUS has been formed in collaboration with SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the University at Albany (SUNY), and the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS).
Founding societies in the ASCUS partnership now include the
- International Communication Association (ICA),
- Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC),
- Rhetoric Society of America,
- International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity,
- Nordic Information Center for Media and Communication Research,
- European Institute for Communication and Culture,
- Newspaper Research Division of AEJMC,
- Communication Institute for Online Scholarship,
- Organization for Research on Women and Communication.
For further information, please contact Dr. Barry Eisenberg, Executive Director, at BarEisen@aol.com.
ASCUS AND AMIGOS LIBRARY SERVICES
ASCUS is happy to announce that Amigos Library Services has been engaged as our marketing and sales agent in the United States and Canada for ASCUS’ new electronic journals package. Amigos Library Services is a non-profit organization and a leader in library resource-sharing networks.
ASCUS AND UMICH SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING OFFICE
ASCUS is pleased to announce that it has formed a relationship with the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan. The Scholarly Publishing Office will serve as the technology host for ASCUS' collection.