On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, Thomas Krichel wrote: >sh> What is needed, urgently, today, is universal self-archiving, and >sh> not trivial worries about whether to do it here or there or both: >sh> OAI-interoperability makes this into a non-issue from the >sh> self-archiver's point of view, and merely a technical feature to >sh> sort out, from the OAI-developers' point of view. > > Success here depends on selling the idea to academics, and that > depends crucially on what business models are followed.
I have no idea what "business models" have to do with demonstrating to academics that increasing research access increases research impact. http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html > each of the disciplines > that have traditionally issued preprints and working papers, > i.e. computer science, economomics, mathematics and physics > has its own special case. All have their own business model. > One size does not fit all. I still can't follow. These are among the disciplines whose researchers have self-archived -- in the case of physics/maths, mostly in one disciplinary archive, in the case of computer science and economics, in arbitrary websites (and some central archives). I don't know what you mean by a "business model." And the only fact that fits them all is that self-archiving maximizes research impact by maximizing research access. That is also the only relevant fact here -- other than that OAI-compliant self-archiving is far more effective and desirable than arbitrary self-archiving. > > No need! First, because the "duplification of effort" is so minimal > > It will not be, especially when there is a chance to have > different versions in different archives, this could be > rather, if not highly, problematic. I have no idea how much of a technical problem duplicate self-archiving would cause (whether of the same paper in different archives, or different versions of the same paper in the same or different archives). But my response is: "If only that were our only remaining 'problem' then my work would be done!" The real problem is getting the research community to realize that it needs to self-archive *at all* (never mind how many versions!), and why, and how. Compared to that fundamental "nullplification-of-effort" problem, which is the one we are still facing currently, any "duplication-of-effort" or "balking-at-duplicating-effort" problem is truly trivial. > > It is such a small issue that it does not belong in a general discussion > > of open access and self-archiving for researchers. > > You constantly belittle techncial problems, and then you wonder > why the archives are staying empty or do not exist. Answer: because > these "technical problems" have not been solved. By belittling > them, you put yourself in the way of finding a solution. I belittle trivial problems to put them in context, and to highlight the sole nontrivial problem. Double-archived papers are a trivial problem. Non-archived papers are the nontrivial problem. I am *certain* (not guessing, *certain*) that the reason the archives are not filling faster is most decidedly *not* because of any aspect of the "duplicate paper" problem. Most researchers don't even understand why they should self-archive *one* version of a paper, let alone being concerned about having to self-archive more than one. What gets in the way of finding a solution to the nontrivial problem -- universal self-archiving -- is a pathway littered with trivial problems and nonproblems (of which "duplication" is merely the 23rd of at least 26 I've catalogued so far: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#23.Version ). Stevan Harnad