> It is merely distraction and dreaming to worry about search tools when > the OA content is not yet there for them to search!
+++ for our little brave world of ant systematics (covering ca 11,700 species) we have all we can online accessible, that is > 70,000 pages in pdf, both single and bound pdf accomplished with support of the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History as main supporters. The pages cover ca 3,500 publications dating from 1758 (see for example for "Camponotus herculeanus" in taxon search at antbase.org) to today. They are linked into our catalogue of ants (and another ca 130,000 names of bees, wasps, etc., so that from every citation the original publication can be read. Together with UMass Boston, the American Museum of Natural History, Ohio State University and University of Magdeburg and supported by NSF/DFG, we are developing a standard to convert those legacy publication and mark their content up using XML schema or similar tools. The problem, besides technical issues, is, as you make it clear, to assure that we do have access to recent publications. For example, for 2003, 423 (!) new ant species have been described, of which only the original description of 8 (!) species are open access. Interestingly, this includes also a publication by Harvard University Press by E.O.Wilson, the single largest producer of new species description of 2003. A university publisher which I would assume should be at the forefront of open access to serve the scientific community. This somewhat pioneer project seems to have inspired other research groups to begin build up an archive of publications covering their taxa (groups of plants and ants). Independently of that, research institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History are beginning to open up their archives by transferring the legacy publications into digital publications, and hopefully entirely open access. It is still a far way to go to get all the publications of the ca 1,500,000 species, each with an (ant) average of 6 pages, thus 9,000,000 pages. But I believe, we will only get the money to transfer this huge amount of legacy data, if we can provide the best possible access to its body - thus excuse of thinking ahead. Donat Agosti
