Jean-Claude raises an important point: from a technical perspective, there is no necessary difference between journal repositories and other types of repositories. Ideally, all will be interoperable for searching purposes and cross-deposit will be routine. The only difference is what is collected in a given repository. A journal collects the works that belong in the journal, a disciplinary repository the articles that fit a particular discipline, an institutional repository the output of the institution.
Other signs that this is already beginning to happen: Library scholarly communication services frequently combine journal hosting and the institutional repository, sometimes using the same software. The SWORD protocol facilitates cross-deposit, including journal / repository cross-deposit. A growing number of journals, both OA and non-OA, routinely deposit all articles in repositories as well - e.g. BioMedCentral deposits in both PMC and institutional repositories (where this is technically feasible); a number of journals deposit all articles in E-LIS for preservation purposes. OJS (and likely other open access journal platforms) supports the OAI-PMH protocol, facilitating cross-searching of journals and repositories. >From a searching perspective, the tendency to start from databases or internet >search engines like Google rather than browsing journals has been a growing >factor for years, predating open access. What is surprising is not the convergence per se, but rather how long the transition is taking considering how much sense this makes. It is good to see that mathematicians are taking the lead in furthering what to me is an obvious next stage in publishing, overlay journals building on repositories: http://www.nature.com/news/mathematicians-aim-to-take-publishers-out-of-publishing-1.12243 Years ago I would have argued that the question of archiving and preservation could be left to a later date and should not distract from the task of making the work open access in the first place. Now that we already have more than 20% of the world's scholarly literature freely available within a couple of years of publication, and the emergence of the possibility of publication of research data becoming routine, I argue that this task needs to be addressed - not to delay or distract us from making open access happen, but rather at the same time. On the ground it is generally different people who are involved in the tasks of preserving information, so moving forward with this need not take anything away from the primary drive to OA. One of the arguments for deposit in the institutional repository is that the work will be preserved - many an IR service now needs to go about the task of fulfilling this promise. best, Heather Morrison The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com On 2013-01-21, at 8:02 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: > No quarrel with all this. I just wanted to point out that an OA journal, > technically, is very close to a repository, at least at its basic level. > Modular functions can be added, of course, but they can also move across > platforms without much trouble. As for the vocabulary: repository, archive, > depository, whatever... We might want to make this terminology a bit more > rigorous, but it is not a major issue Imho. > > Incidentally, from what I have just said, it is not difficult to understand > why I believe that OA journals and repositories will converge (mixing and > matching). I see the emergence of mega-journals as a potent sign of this. > > Best, > > Jean-Claude Guédon > > > > Le lundi 21 janvier 2013 à 11:42 +1100, Arthur Sale a écrit : >> I think we are now getting into an off-target area: not open access but >> archiving. It is really unfortunate that open access repositories were ever >> called archives. >> >> Heather is right. In the past print publishers of books and journals just >> had to print them onto papyrus, vellum, or paper, using a non-ephemeral ink, >> and rely on dissemination (and libraries) to do the preservation. >> Preservation in the digital era is a different matter, having to cope with >> ephemeral media and error-resistant information (the opposite of the >> Gutenberg era). But this is not central open access stuff, important though >> it is. >> >> Of course, to forestall comment by someone who wants to carp, the lifetime >> of research outputs does vary. In some disciplines it is of the order of a >> year or two on average, in others perhaps of centuries, to use the extremes. >> >> Arthur Sale >> Tasmania, Australia >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: >> goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org >> ] On Behalf >> Of Heather Morrison >> Sent: Monday, 21 January 2013 10:11 AM >> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) >> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Please distinguish what is and is not relevant to >> mandating Green OA self-archiving >> >> On 20-Jan-13, at 2:25 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: (excerpt) >> >> Some forms of Gold do not require any more payment than what is needed to >> maintain a repository. In fact, an OA Gold journal is a repository of its >> own articles. >> >> Comment: a gold OA journal serves as a repository, however it is important >> to understand that any journal, or the open access status of a journal, may >> be ephemeral in nature. Journals are archived and preserved by libraries, >> not by journals and publishers. This is important to understand because gold >> open access without open access archives is highly vulnerable. Journals can >> simply disappear, or be sold by open access publishers to toll access >> publishers. For this reason I argue that open access archives are absolutely >> essential to sustainable open access. >> >> best, >> >> Heather >> _______________________________________________ >> GOAL mailing list >> >> GOAL@eprints.org >> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> GOAL mailing list >> >> GOAL@eprints.org >> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > -- > > > Jean-Claude Guédon > Professeur titulaire > Littérature comparée > Université de Montréal > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
