Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:35:02 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun@mssrf.res.in> 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