The irony is that so few academics are convinced that self-
archiving is good for them (like cod liver oil?) and that it
takes mandates to get them to do it
Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
Email: sally morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-llists.yale.edu] On Behalf
Of Aaron Edlin
Sent: 29 November 2007 00:51
To: liblicense-llists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: NIH mandate - institutional repositories
My own thinking, and the philosophy of bepress, is that the
university is filled with many interests and constituencies.
The
puzzle is getting them to work well together. Faculty seek
to
promote themselves individually, and seek control and
identity;
universities seek to promote themselves and grow; librarians
seek
to create useful order from chaos. These goals can, but need
not,
conflict.
As to mandates, I favor them. As I see it, the university
or
government funds much of my research. Why should they not
demand
and insist on a non-exclusive copy of my writings to
preserve for
posterity (for what posterity cares about my work) or to
advertise to the world, should I be lucky enough that UC
Berkeley
could bask in the glory of my writing?
All that said, for various political and practical reasons,
including lobbying by Elsevier, I don't see *effective*
mandates
coming for a little while yet.
In the meantime, the key for those who are pro-repository is
to
find a way to work with faculty. How do you make faculty
volunteer or indeed be eager? Convince them that their
career
will benefit and give them control and something to identify
with. Faculty want their own place...one they control... on
the
internet. Many build sites themselves with cumbersome and
kludgy
tools. These sites are highly idiosyncratic data
structures.
Better that they should be easy to use, beautiful, and
easily
harvestable (or automatically incorporated) into the
institution's IR (or Research Showcase, as I like to call
it).
For this, bepress developed SelectedWorks
(http://works.bepress.com
). D-space has developed personal
research pages. These, I predict, will be key to filling
repositories until effective mandates arrive.
___
P.S. Please have a look at http://works.be
press.com/aaron_edlin/
and sign up for notifications of my new work!
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