Bepress is a commercial, academic software firm owned by RELX Group. It began in 1999 as the Berkeley Electronic Press, co-founded by academics Robert Cooter and Aaron Edlin. It makes products and services to support scholarly communication, including institutional repository and publishing software. Until September 2011 it also published electronic journals.
In August 2017, Bepress was acquired by RELX Group for an undisclosed amount, reported to be around £100 million ($129.3 million).[1][2] The acquisition drew criticism from the library community.[3]
Bepress published electronic journals in the social sciences, law, medicine, and natural sciences, before selling the portfolio to Walter de Gruyter in September 2011.[4] It published its first journals in December 2000, with the exception of Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, which existed as a peer-reviewedacademic journal prior to its incorporation into the Bepress system.[5] The journals included The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, and The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics.
