The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) identifies, develops, and uses a state's academic science and technology (S&T) resources to support its economic growth and a more productive and fulfilling way of life for its citizens. EPSCoR acts on the premise that universities, their science and engineering faculty, and their students are valuable resources that can influence a state's development in the 21st century. To achieve this goal, NSF collaborates with state leaders in government, higher education, and business to create partnerships that can bring lasting improvements to the state's academic research infrastructure and increase its national research and development (R&D competitiveness.)

Scientific/technical/medical (STM) journal publishers are in the forefront of electronic online publishing that previously appeared in print on paper journals. Most of these journals are now available in both print and electronic formats; a few are only available only in electronic formats. As journals begin a transition from print to electronic formats, publishers can anticipate cost savings that provide more room for price negotiation. At the same time, the introduction of electronic desktop access to electronic STM literature introduces increased vulnerability for the literature to be immediately and almost cost-free copied and widely distributed without appropriate payment. As a consequence publishers have begun to rely on contractual licensing agreements rather than copyright for protection of their intellectual property. Thus, university libraries are faced with the new phenomenon of leasing rather than purchasing scholarly material. As publishers begin to enter this unfamiliar world, both opportunities and challenges for negotiation and leverage have increased.

In line with its mission, EPSCoR has consistently intervened to assist institutions in small, usually rural, states to strengthen their research infrastructure. With the recognition that an expanding Internet was an essential pre-requisite to competitive research, there was a growing concern that lack of such fundamental infrastructure threatened to further the divide between the haves and have-nots of the research world. Robert Rich of the AAAS noted in a 1998 EPSCoR-sponsored conference in San Diego a need "…to enable users everywhere to access powerful resources from the desktop." NSF EPSCoR recognized this serious infrastructure shortfall and intervened, most recently, by offering competitive funding for high-bandwidth network initiatives. This evolving information infrastructure was designed to allow EPSCoR states to make the most of Internet usage and to remain competitive in their research endeavors. Thanks to EPSCoR, researchers in these states have access to high-bandwidth connectivity and unprecedented connectivity to their desktops. The Internet revolutionized the opportunity for EPSCoR states to take advantage of national and shared computational resources. The blurring lines between refereed scholarly research results and the mechanism of its delivery now offers EPSCoR institutions an opportunity to level the playing field by taking advantage of distributed information-retrieval systems and consortium purchasing to provide current STM literature to researchers' desktops. While access to current STM literature has long been viewed as fundamental to the advancement of science, the traditional pricing models as well as its paper format have made inroads into what has become a “haves and have-nots” situation prohibitive. Indeed, given that streaming media and audio are destined to play an increasingly important component in the future of scholarly literature, the delivery of STM literature, in itself, may constitute an important and potentially exciting application of the high-bandwidth networks.

EPSCoR program is intended to “level the research playing field” for poorer U.S. states, however it is addressing only one side of the equation. EPSCoR seeks to accomplish this by:

Increasing the R&D competitiveness of an eligible state by developing and using the S&T resources in its research universities (institutions that grant significant numbers of the state's Ph.D. degrees in science and engineering disciplines).

Stimulating sustainable S&T infrastructure improvements at the state an institutional levels to increase the ability of EPSCoR researchers to compete for Federal and private sector R&D funding.

Accelerating the movement of EPSCoR researchers and institutions into the mainstream of Federal and private sector R&D support.

Researchers require a solid, if not robust, information environment to support their work. Such an environment, by and large, does not currently exist in EPSCoR institutions of higher education, and to the extent that it might exist there is wide variance between institutions and states; therefore EPSCoR’s efforts are being impeded. There exists the persistent concern that existing STM literature (including literature funded with federal grant dollars) receives far less attention/use than it merits (frequently described as a failure of knowledge transfer among researchers) because of impediments to access. Indeed, early data tends to confirm the validity of these assertions. Use of electronic journals at institutions of higher education in Ohio has revealed that over 1/2 (58%) of the journal articles retrieved were not previously owned in print by the library where the article was downloaded. Similar preliminary results have been reported at the University of Nevada, Reno, which has offered the electronic full-text of all Elsevier-Science journals for over two years. In addition, in a year-to-year comparison, the rate of downloading articles at the University of Nevada, Reno has jumped by over 200%. These findings indicate the critical nature of providing a more robust collection of scientific literature; not only has the selection of literature proven difficult to anticipate, but also the use of the literature is showing dramatic increases.

In this period of uncertainty federal governments in the UK and Canada have collectively and successfully bargained on behalf of their institutions of higher education for increased access to this STM literature through centrally negotiated licensing agreements for publishers' entire electronic collections. The UK was one of the earliest countries to negotiate countrywide licensing. Through their NESLI project, UK research universities gained access to licensed STM materials at substantially discounted prices. Major STM publishers such as Blackwell, Elsevier, Kluwer, Oxford University Press, and Academic Press are involved in these arrangements. Larger states in the U.S. have also negotiated arrangements with STM publishers. The State of Ohio negotiated with publishers on behalf of all institutions of higher education in the State and the University of California system has acquired online access to this literature for its campuses. EPSCoR libraries are at risk of becoming not just the paupers of the U.S. research community, but of the English speaking world.

The opportunity presented by the availability of electronic scholarly STM literature combined with what is known about how scholars search for information promises a dramatic impact on the way that research is conducted and its results disseminated and used. Research has shown that scholars first look for information related to their research in published articles and papers they have previously used and that are located in files in their offices and laboratories. Those papers are scoured for context-sensitive, pertinent references. Scientists then turn to colleagues either locally or via email for further suggestions regarding existing research findings. As one of the final resorts, a researcher or her/his graduate assistant will use an index to the literature in the field. This has always been less than satisfactory for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the inability to scan the full-text of any promising articles located in an index due to the lack of local availability. The power of distributed computing combined with electronic scholarly literature promises to change this situation. Once literature is available at a researcher's desktop there is every reason to believe that a more robust search for pertinent literature will be undertaken; the effort and time required will be less and the results will be more rewarding. Moreover the search will not be in vain if the desired literature is available at the desktop for easy examination. Not only is there potential to improve the quality of literature review, but also the use of the STM scholarly literature.

		NSF mediated site licensing for EPSCoR group. Could be viewed as discrete test set for possible national site licensing.
		NSF-backed consortium; third-party entity created to license on behalf of EPSCoR members (NSF.members shared funding or funding soley from members; in either case NSF funds the “consortium staffing”).
		Discover existing consortial arrangement that will “adopt” all EPSCoR members.