Re: Cliff Lynch on Institutional Archives
ph unless organisational issues (such as, for example, the absence ph of an intelligible publishing process for the multiple submission ph of eprints to archives) are more important in the field than is ph being recognised in this discussion. sh I couldn't follow this! sh What is an intelligible publishing process? sh Eprints = pre-refereeing preprints + published, refereed postprints. sh http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#What-is-Eprint sh Self-archiving is not self-publishing; it is merely a means of providing sh open access to one's own preprints and postprints. By 'publishing process' I meant the coordination of multiple versions and revisions of the same paper, within the same or different OAI archives. I think this is what Chris Gutteridge was aiming at by suggesting 'some negotiated automated process for insitutional archives uploading to the subject archive, or at least assisting the author in the process'. It is a publishing process to the user, in that multiple copies are deposited in the archives, and that version control is a feature of the process. This process has to be intelligible to the user, or there won't be siginificant take-up. This is the territory for the development of third party services by service providers, rather than part of the base-level eprints/self-archiving idea. The absence of such services (I was suggesting) might have a bearing on the currently low-level of deposits in archives. I prefer to speak of submission to archives, since not all eprint archives expose all the materials which have been deposited. The act of depositing an eprint does not automatically imply (in practice) open access. It is important to be clear about what is actually happening in the world of eprint archives. Philip *** Philip Hunter, Editor of Ariadne Magazine UKOLN Research Officer. UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY Tel: +44 (0) 1225 323 668 Fax: +44 (0) 1225 826838 Email: p.j.hun...@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ ARIADNE: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/ OA-FORUM: http://www.oaforum.org/ *** And what is multiple submission of eprints to archives? Eprints are not submitted to archives. (They are merely deposited in archives.) Preprints are submitted to *journals* (for peer review), and if/when accepted, the refereed postprints are published by those journals. Preprints and postprints are deposited (self-archived) in Eprint Archives. The rate of archive-creation and filling is increasing, but it needs to be accelerated substantially, and as soon as possible. Systematic institutional self-archiving policies will help accomplish this once institutions realize the direct causal connection between maximizing research access and maximizing research impact. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/unto-others.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Ariadne-RAE.htm http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lac/archpol.html http://paracite.eprints.org/cgi-bin/rae_front.cgi Stevan Harnad
The RePEc (Economics) Model
[Subject header changed from the Cliff Lynch paper to RePEc to reflect the change in focus.] On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Thomas Krichel wrote: For self-archiving, abstract understanding [by academics] is not sufficient. You need action by academics. If you want to have an intermediated process (by means of an archive) then it will crucially depend on the behaviour of the intermediary, in this case of the archive management. The Repec model is one in which many distributed institutions, each having archives of multiple economics papers of their own, have their metadata gathered together and enriched to provide OAI-like interoperability: http://repec.org/ Instead of using the OAI protocol, Repec uses the Guildford protocol -- ftp://netec.mcc.ac.uk/pub/NetEc/RePEc/all/root/docu/guilp.html -- but it has been announced that Repec plans to become OAI-compliant eventually. (Repec does *not*, as I had wrongly assumed, cover individual websites too, as ResearchIndex/citeseer http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs does, only multi-paper institutional archives.) Repec is accordingly a form of institutional self-archiving, pre-dating the OAI, but (1) focused on one discipline only (economics), and (2) not requiring the individual archives to be OAI-compliant (but Guildford-compliant). It is a very activist project, a collaborative effort of over 100 volunteers in 30 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. It should be noted at once that if every discipline had its own institutional Guildford-compliant archives and volunteers, as Economics has, then I and many others would today be promoting Institutional Guilford-compliant repositories rather than Institutional OAI-compliant repositories (and the free software that Southampton designed for creating OAI-compliant institutional repositories for self-archiving http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html would have been Guildford-compliant software). As it happened, it is OAI that prevailed (inspired partly by Guildford and Repec), with Thomas Krichel as one of its co-founders, and still a member of the OAI technical committee. What distinguished Repec is hence not its interoperability protocol (since it plans to become OAI-compliant anyway) but (a) its activism and (b) its discipline-specificity. If there were a way to spread Repec's activism from economics to the other disciplines, it would certainly be very welcome, just as it would be very welcome if there were a way to spread ArXiv's central-archiving tendency to the other disciplines. Unfortunately, no such generalization of either Repec or Arxiv to the other disciplines has taken place (Repec began in 1997, Arxiv in 1991). http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm It is for this reason that it is OAI-compliant institutional self-archiving that I happen to be promoting. And this is at last showing signs of generalizing http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/tim-arch.htm though still not fast enough. It is for that reason that various forms of activism need to be promoted too, especially institutional activism: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#institution-facilitate-filling http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#libraries-do http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#research-funders-do http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Ariadne-RAE.htm http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lac/archpol.html http://paracite.eprints.org/cgi-bin/rae_front.cgi You have changed your mind twice on what the optimal business model is. You will change it again... I have changed my mind in response to specific empirical changes that have taken place across the years. (I would hope everyone else has done so too.) For me, the first major change was the Internet itself, converting me from conducting most activities on-paper to on-line: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/15/81/ I even founded an online-only journal (1989): http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk Then came Ann Okerson's suggestion that information should be free, which I initially dismissed as unrealistic, but then realized that it could be turned into something that made excellent sense on condition that it was applied very specifically only to *author give-away* information (of which the refereed research literature is the main representative), rather than all information (or even all scholarly information): http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad95.quo.vadis.html That was what then prompted the subversive proposal that researchers should self-archive their give-away research (1994): http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html At first, FTP sites and Web sites seemed the simplest, fastest and most direct way for researchers to self-archive, on a distributed, institutional basis; but then the slow progress in this, and the success of the physicists' centralized disciplinary model suggested that centralized, discipline-based self-archiving might be faster, with the Physics Arxiv itself perhaps subsuming it all
Re: The RePEc (Economics) Model
Leslie Carr writes sh It is such a small issue that it does not belong in a general sh discussion of open access and self-archiving for researchers. tc You constantly belittle techncial problems, and then you wonder tc why the archives are staying empty or do not exist. Answer: because tc these technical problems have not been solved. By belittling tc them, you put yourself in the way of finding a solution. You know, I wonder if that's the case. I can see your point, and I won't argue that EPrints, or DSpace, or arxiv provides perfect technical solutions to every imaginable problem or the perfect user interface for every user. I did not express myself well I wrote, I meant to say that much of what Stevan belittles as technical is in fact symptomatic of wider social issue that impact on the academic self-documentation process. (I will refrain here from speaking of RePeC, since I don't know of any shortcomings that it may have :-) One obvious example is the captialization of the name that folks don't seem to get right :-) I think this area (academic motivation) is quite likely to hold the key to the missing content. That is what I have been saying all along. You have to give academics the motivation to participate. A reliance on carrot and stick from central administration is not likely to be sufficient. Certainly in local discussions several solutions have been suggested, but no agreement on a globally optimal solution has been reached :-) Sure, because a global solution is not there, it depends on the discipline. Some will get to self-archive slowly some fast, some not at all. I can surly imagine a situation where for legal scholarship you have to pay, but where physics is free. With greetings from Minsk, Belarus, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: The RePEc (Economics) Model
Stevan Harnad writes The Repec model is one in which many distributed institutions, each having archives of multiple economics papers of their own, have their metadata gathered together and enriched to provide OAI-like interoperability: http://repec.org/ The interoperability is more complicated then in a conventional OAI setting, because the structure of the data exchanged goes will beyond what can be done with oai_dc. Instead of using the OAI protocol, Repec uses the Guildford protocol -- ftp://netec.mcc.ac.uk/pub/NetEc/RePEc/all/root/docu/guilp.html -- but it has been announced that Repec plans to become OAI-compliant eventually. I already operate a gateway at http://oai.repec.openlib.org. It's oai_dc data may be a bit thin, but there is plenty of AMF metadata. (Repec does *not*, as I had wrongly assumed, cover individual websites too, as ResearchIndex/citeseer http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs does, only multi-paper institutional archives.) Departmental archives, as distinguished from institutional archives. Some archives serve special purposes, they hold no docuemnt data at all. Repec is accordingly a form of institutional self-archiving, pre-dating the OAI, but (1) focused on one discipline only (economics), and (2) not requiring the individual archives to be OAI-compliant (but Guildford-compliant). Correct, which is basically just a way to dump files on a disk, nothing more. It is a very activist project, a collaborative effort of over 100 volunteers in 30 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. Correct, and almost all are economics faculty. Some folks do little, but the construction of the whole enterprise means that even if they do little, since there are many It should be noted at once that if every discipline had its own institutional Guildford-compliant archives and volunteers, as Economics has, then I and many others would today be promoting Institutional Guilford-compliant repositories rather than Institutional OAI-compliant repositories (and the free software that Southampton designed for creating OAI-compliant institutional repositories for self-archiving http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html would have been Guildford-compliant software). The technical protocol for the transport matters little. This really (!) is a technical matter. We continue with what we got because we can not rearrange 250+ archives that otherwise do just fine. What distinguished Repec is hence not its interoperability protocol (since it plans to become OAI-compliant anyway) but (a) its activism and (b) its discipline-specificity. and (c) its metadata model. This is by far the most important, but least well understood distinction. If there were a way to spread Repec's activism from economics to the other disciplines, it would certainly be very welcome, just as it would be very welcome if there were a way to spread ArXiv's central-archiving tendency to the other disciplines. Could not agree more. Unfortunately, no such generalization of either Repec or Arxiv to the other disciplines has taken place (Repec began in 1997, Arxiv in 1991). RePEc has its origin in a project called WoPEc that I started on February 1, 1993. In 1997, RePEc was born essentially out of WoPEc and some other partners, but WoPEc had the lion's share (I am simplifying here a bit.) http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm It is for this reason that it is OAI-compliant institutional self-archiving that I happen to be promoting. And this is at last showing signs of generalizing http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/tim-arch.htm though still not fast enough. It is for that reason that various forms of activism need to be promoted too, especially institutional activism: There is no contradicition between institutional and departmental archives, and aggregator strutures. It is by no means an either or choice. And let me emphasise again: having discipline-based aggregators will be the best way to stimulate institutional and departmental archiving. The problem is, of course, that there are not many aggregators around. Therefore I have been argueing for a while thet the institutional self-archiving community should stick together to elect one area of discplinary priority. That is rather that to fight a war on all fronts, concentrate the effort and build systems that are interoperable beyond the unqualified DC data model. The DC data model is too simple for academic self-documentation. At first, FTP sites and Web sites seemed the simplest, fastest and most direct way for researchers to self-archive, on a distributed, institutional basis; They still are, just look at the amount of stuff that is on the web. There are so many grass-roots initiatives. The larger public is not aware of them because they serve specific communities. This is where I get so angry with
Re: The RePEc (Economics) Model
Stevan Harnad writes The Big Koan is: Why aren't all researchers self-archiving yet, given its benefits and feasibility? http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html One answer that I have is that the benefits of doing self archiving have to be demostrated to the invidual level of each researcher. Making general arguments about it is not enough. One thing that we do in RePEc (sorry), is that we aggregate all papers for a certain author, through a registration project called HoPEc. We also aggregate access logs across most of our user services in the LogEc project. Thus we can furnish researches with precise data to see how much the papers that they have been making available are accessed. With greetings from Minsk, Belarus, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
