Re: Should Publishers Offer Free-Access Services?

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_cogprints.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 02:06:29 +0000

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Thomas J. Walker wrote:

> The University of Florida has no OAI-compliant University Eprint
> Archives and my attempts to interest the Director of Libraries in
> starting one have so far been unsuccessful.
>
> Perhaps it is not too late for APS and some of its authors to benefit from
> the service I described.

Well, I shall have to leave it to the university community's
judgment whether, in the short- and long-term interest of

(1) maximizing other universities' access to their outgoing research,
(2) maximixing the impact of their outgoing research,
(3) maximizing their own access to other universities' outgoing research,
    and perhaps eventually also
(3) relieving their serials crisis

the university library and administration elect to:

(a) do nothing,
(b) create and fill university Eprint Archives of their outgoing
    research,
(c) pay journals to do the equivalent for them.

My guess is that by far the cheapest, fastest, most productive, and
most general option would be (b). And a growing number of universities
seem to be coming to this conclusion too (that UFL is not yet one of
them may not be the decisive datum):

http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6
http://www.eprints.org/users.php
http://oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu/Register/BrowseSites.pl

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#7.2
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#7.3

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free
access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the
American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):

    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
                            or
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

You may join the list at the amsci site.

Discussion can be posted to:

    american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Received on Fri Dec 21 2001 - 02:07:39 GMT

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