On 5-Jun-04, at 7:30 PM, David Goodman wrote:
> This excellent advice needs to be tempered with a major caution:
> institutional web sites, even OAI-compliant ones, are not necessarily
> secure repositories. They could be, if the institution were to make a
> commitment to maintaining the site, to guaranteeing its accessibility,
> usability, OAI-compliance, and permanence in a way that is manifest to
> the authors and the potential users. Many institutions have some sort
> of
> a repository, but what is to prevent the administrators from removing
> the papers of those who have left the institution? What is to prevent
> their discontinuation?
These are good points - although no reason to delay! Authors should
proceed with self-archiving, and institutions with building their
repositories, while the details are being worked out.
It might be useful to remember that publishers have long been
publishing, without necessarily considering archiving to be their
responsibility at all.
There is much to be done in the longer term, though - institutional
repositories (and other kinds of archives) need to develop policies,
guidelines, and procedures, both for those doing the archiving and for
those submitting their articles. For example, when an author moves
from one university to another, do the author's archived articles come
along? What about a new faculty member who is teaching at several
universities while working toward that first permanent appointment?
The nice thing about open access, of course, is that we do not have to
choose. If it's worth the time and effort, keep copies at each
university, plus one on the author's own web site. Or, let the author
choose, as long as one copy is openly accessible.
Perhaps it might be useful to begin to discuss some of these details?
May I suggest that universities should assume that once they place
peer-reviewed, published scholarly articles in their repositories,
preservation and ongoing access is their responsibility, unless and
until such responsiblity is assumed by another body? Or is this too
obvious to need stating?
cheers,
Heather G. Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phone: 604-268-7001
Fax: 604-291-3023
Email: heatherm_at_eln.bc.ca
Web:
http://www.eln.bc.ca
Received on Tue Jun 08 2004 - 01:27:07 BST