Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:35:02 +0530
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
Friends:
Here is an excellent article on why scientists and scholars, their
institutions and funding agencies should focus on setting up institutional
archives (or repositories). Stevan Harnad is simply unbeatable in his
clartity of thinking and lucidity in exposition!
I am surprised at the tremendous indifference prevailing in India. Only a
handful of institutions either have set up or are setting up interoperable
institutional open access archives in India. Scientists appear to be the
least scientific when it comes to communicating and publicising their
reserach findings. Steve Lawrence of NEC Research, Princeton, and a
muli-institutional team comprising researchers fromSouthampton,
Loughborough, Edinburgh and Quebec Universities have shown that papers
available in the public domain are cited several times more often than
papers available only in toll-access journals. And even toll access journals
now permit authors to archive their papers in their own institutional
archives. A few days ago, Ms Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President for
Strategy at Elsevier, wrote to Stevan Harnad about the welcome change in
Elsevier's policy which now allows authors to archive their papers in their
institutional archives. And yet our scientists, laboratory directors, vice
chancellors and heads of funding agencies have not proactively demanded, set
up or supported setting up of institutional archives! On the brighter side,
both the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy
and CSIR are aware of the importance and benefits of Open Access and have
supported a few workshops. INSA has also signed the Berlin Declaration.
There are a few individuals - such as T B Rajashekar, A R D Prasad and D K
Sahu and of late Sunil Abraham - who are willing to share their expertise
with individuals and institutions keen to set up institutional
archives/repositories. I wish their tribe increases. And more importantly, I
wish librarians and scientists all over India set up archives at their
institutions. Let us gain greater visibility for the research we perform.
Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]
-------
Here is is a synopsis, based on the current data and trends, concerning:
CENTRAL DISCIPLINE-BASED SELF-ARCHIVING versus DISTRIBUTED INSTITUTION-BASED
SELF-ARCHIVING:
(1) The number of articles in the biggest of the central archives, which
have been around for some time, is growing at an unchanging linear rate
that is far too slow.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0043.gif
(2) The number of articles in individual institutional archives -- *when
they have institutional self-archiving policies*
http://software.eprints.org/handbook/departments.php -- is growing
faster than any central archive. http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php
(3) There are few central archives, their number is growing very slowly,
and it requires far more concerted action to create new ones.
(4) There are many institutional archives, their numbers are growing fast,
and it takes only a little local action to create new ones.
http://software.eprints.org/handbook/managing-background.php
(5) There is a centralized funding and upkeep problem with centralized
archives, and often no persistent "entity" to ensure they keep going.
(6) With institutional archives the costs are distributed across the
universities, and each university is a persistent entity.
(*7) There is no entity behind a centralized archive to mandate and monitor
their filling, nor is there any shared interest between the author and the
archive in the enhanced impact that motivates authors to self-archive.
(*8) The author's institution is in a position to create institutional
archives and to mandate and monitor their filling (with an institutional
policy of OA provision), and there is a strong shared interest between
the author and the archive in the enhanced impact that motivates authors to
self-archive. http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
(9) Although 80% of journals have already given their green light to
author self-archiving, but many of them are still reluctant to sanction
archiving in 3rd-party archives (i.e., other than those of the author's
institution or publisher) for fear of sanctioning cut-rate 3rd-party
publisher-rivals. (The fear is ungrounded for many reasons, but it is
there as a further retardant on central archiving.)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html
(10) OAI-compliance has made all OAI archives -- central and
institutional -- equivalent, interoperable, jointly harvestable and
searchable. The most important points are *7 and *8: Swan & Brown (2004)
"asked authors to say how they would feel if their employer or funding body
required them to deposit copies of their published articles in repositories.
The vast majority... said they would do so willingly." Swan, A. & Brown,
S.N. (2004) JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey Report.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3628.html Swan, A. &
Brown, S.N. (2004) Authors and open access publishing. Learned Publishing
2004:17(3) 219-224. I am pretty sure that many of the
misplaced expectations for central archives (rather like the misplaced
expectations for OA Journals) are simply based on a misunderstanding of the
nature of OA, the motivation for OA, and the fastest and surest means of
providing OA. All means are welcome, but please, let us invest our efforts
in proportion to their power and probability of success, based on the
available evidence and reason, and not on the basis of preconceptions (which
are almost always papyrocentric in unconscious ways, and often obsolete) or
abstract speculations.
Pertinent Prior Amsci Forum Topic-Threads:
"Central vs. Distributed Archives"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0293.html
"Central versus institutional self-archiving"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3206.html
"Association for Computer Machinery Copyright/Self-Archiving Policy"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1944.html
"Open Letter to Philip Campbell, Editor, Nature"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2601.html
"Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0497.html
"Elsevier Science Policy on Public Web Archiving Needs Re-Thinking"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2071.html
"Elsevier Gives Authors Green Light for Open Access Self-Archiving"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3770.html
"Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2549.html
"University policy mandating self-archiving of research output"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3438.html
Stevan Harnad
