Institutional Repositories (IR's) are gaining good traction at many
research universities, and I think it is time for the Open Access
enthusiasts to take note and begin thinking about how both movements
might work together. There has been a lot of discussion about how Open
Access can support long-term preservation and access based on authors
fees. IR's such as DSpace are designed first as preservation mediums,
and it seems we ought to consider how we can use IR's as part of
the architecture of a system of Open Access.
I find faculty at Vanderbilt are far more interested in IR's than
open access, and it may be a way to get their attention and buy-in
to open access if they see a link to their home institution.
We need to make sure the two movements do not go down separate
tracks.
--On Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:00 PM +0000 Steve Hitchcock
<[email protected]> wrote:
Mark Ware's report on institutional repositories is a balanced,
thorough and welcome review that has some features not found in
other reports of this sort.
See full record in Perspectives in Electronic Publishing (short
review reproduced below)
http://aims.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pep.nsf/cc4a508424b9c3ff802566dc004e4
2ff/5c4d447fc4fdeecf80256e46003c0c0e?OpenDocument
This report doesn't have any dramatic new insights on open
access, but it is a pretty thorough review of institutional
repositories (IRs). Surprisingly, given the author's publishing
background, and that of the report's backers, it is remarkably
focussed on IRs and, section 9 apart (notwithstanding its brief
mention PeP), the report doesn't grind any publishing axes.
There is an emphasis on repositories built with DSpace because
the report largely adopts the DSpace/Cliff Lynch philosophy on
IRs, that is, they are for storing all the outputs of an
institution, not just copies of refereed journal papers, or
eprints. So it doesn't have the benefit of the more focussed
Harnad analysis of institutional eprint archives to cut through
most of the issues it raises.
Section 8 is a quantitative analysis of repositories, largely
based on data and charts from work at Southampton by Tim Brody
and based on Eprints.org data. This is a welcome (if inadequately
referenced) and unusual feature to date in reviews such as this.
It's disappointing to see section 8.2 open by stating that
background research had "produced a list of some 45 IRs", since
the Metalist of Open Access Eprint Archives would have revealed
more than this (although for some reason Eprints archives are
omitted here).
The conclusions seem rather positive for IRs: "The case for the
benefits to a research organisation of an institutional
repository providing a set of infrastructural digital services
including uploading/hosting, organising (metadata), disseminating
and long-term preservation seems compelling. ... What is far less
clear is whether IRs will develop large, interoperable
collections of published literature, as hope the advocates of
open access."
For those new to the open access phenomenon, and who may be
puzzled by the lack of coverage of IRs in the currently
publishing-dominated open access agenda in some forums and news
services - there are of necessity two complementary paths to open
access: journal publication and author self-archiving in
repositories - this report is worthwhile indeed.
Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
At 12:57 23/02/04 +0000, Mark Ware wrote:
PALS (The Publisher and Library/Learning Solutions working
group) has recently published a report (which I authored) on
Institutional Repositories. The report is freely available from
the PALS website at
<http://www.palsgroup.org.uk/>http://www.palsgroup.org.uk/
(follow the link for Pathfinder research on web-based
repositories ).
PALS is running a conference based on this research in London on
24 June 2004 entitled Institutional Repositories and Their
Impact on Scholarly Publishing . Details of this are also
available on the PALS website (follow the link for PALS
Conference 04 etc. ).
[About PALS: The Publisher and Library/Learning Solutions (PALS)
working group is an ongoing collaboration between UK publishers
(represented by the Association of Learned and Professional
Society Publishers and the Publishers Association) and further
and higher education (represented by JISC). The group aims to
foster mutual understanding on topics of interest to both
parties, and work collaboratively towards the solution of issues
arising from electronic publication. For more see:
<http://www.palsgroup.org.uk/>http://www.palsgroup.org.uk/]
Regards
-Mark Ware
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W: <http://www.markwareconsulting.com>www.markwareconsulting.com
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