On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Thomas Krichel wrote:
> Stevan Harnad writes
>> SH: (7) University-external, subject-based
self-archiving does
>> not scale up to cover all of OA output space: it is
divergent,
>> divisive, arbitrary, incoherent and unnecessary.
>
> TK: So, do you recommend arXiv, RePEc, E-LIS, etc to
close down?
No, I was talking about where institutions and funders
should
*mandate* depositing institutional research output.
(8) ..."(The deposits, or their metadata, can
then be externally
harvested into whatever subject-based, disciplinary,
or
multidisciplinary central collections we may
desire.)"
To reach 100% OA at long last, the problem is not the small
minority of articles that are already being deposited,
unmandated, for over a decade now, but the vast majority
that
have not been, and are not being.
> Disclosure: I am the creator of RePEc...
Disclosure: I am the creator of CogPrints (launched over ten
years ago).
We can have all the central collections our hearts desire,
and
the small minority (out of all researchers, at all
institutions,
in all disciplines) who already deposit centrally can
continue to
deposit centrally if they wish.
It is infinitely easier for an institution to hack up a way
to
back-harvest the (usually tiny) portion of its own total
research
output that its researchers are already systematically
self-archiving in an OAI-compliant central repository (as
CERN --
a special case of a physics-only institution with the
majority of
its output already being self-archived in Arxiv -- has done)
than
to keep imagining that 100% of institutional output can and
will
find its way into some central collection, somewhere, of its
own
accord.
Or to imagine that the way for an institution to mandate the
self-archiving of 100% of its own research output (and to
audit,
assess, archive and showcase its own research assets, and to
reward compliance by its own researchers) is to mandate that
it
be deposited "somewhere."
(Not mention the even more incoherent and short-sighted
notion of
institutional and funder mandates somehow relying on -- and
paying for! -- proxy institution-external deposit by
publishers
instead of direct self-archiving by researchers.)
What is needed is a coherent, convergent strategy that will
systematically scale up to cover all of research output,
funded
and unfunded, from all disciplines and interdisciplines,
from all
institutions (most of which are pandisciplinary
universities)
worldwide.
Institution-external deposit into arbitrary central
collections
is not that scaleable strategy. Mandated institutional
deposit
is. Both institutions and funders need to take this into
account,
when they mandate OA self-archiving.
Whatever central collections we may desire are then just a
matter
of harvesting content from the distributed OAI-compliant IRs
--
which were made OAI-compliant specifically so as to make
their
content all interoperable and harvestable.
Stevan Harnad
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