On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, David Goodman wrote: > Of course open [access] archiving will give us permanent and > free access to the scientific record. But we also need permanent access to > what has already been published, and what will be published in the > near future, until open [access] archiving has been successful.
Both (1) archiving (and thereby preserving) the toll-access corpus (TA) and (2) (self-)archiving (and thereby creating) the open-access corpus (OA) are necessary, but it is very important to recognise clearly that TA and OA are not the same kind of archiving, and not the same agenda! At a time when the research community is just beginning to become aware of digital archiving issues, conflating TA and OA can only keep the picture blurred. Those who are interested in institutional self-archiving for the sake of open access (OA) should not get wrapped up in the pro-tem stop-gap measures underway to preserve the toll-access corpus (TA). TA is a completely different agenda, and one the OA is working to make obsolete as soon as possible (as David notes above). Librarians must, ex officio, be involved in both TA and OA today. It is hence mainly for researchers that I can only repeat: >sh> So if you are interested in open-access archiving you are unlikely >sh> to find much that is useful at this ALPSP archiving workshop (except >sh> if the technical issues prove to surface more substantially than >sh> anticipated in the ALPSP notice). > http://www.alpsp.org/s291102.htm Stevan Harnad
