Friends:
Stevan Harnad suggests how donor agencies can facilitate setting up
interoperable institutional archives. We can adopt his suggestions for
setting up such archives in India. Of course, one need not trouble the
Southampton team for help; NCSI at IISc has all the expertise and experience
needed. Indeed, Dr Rajashekar has introduced some welcome improvements to
the Eprints software.
Subbiah Arunachalam
MS Swaminathan Institute, Chennai
Trustee, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
-----Original Message-----
From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk]
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 6:36 PM
To: AmSci Forum
Cc: liblicense-l_at_lists.yale.edu
Subject: [BOAI] How To Support Institutional OA Archive Start-Up and OA
Content Provision
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004, Jean-Claude Guedon wrote:
> Stevan, How would you go about funding the conversion of individual
> institutions such as universities?
>
> How would you use funding to achieve "the implementation of official
> institutional self-archiving *policies*"?
>
> As a member of the Information Sub-Board of OSI, I would be interested
> in seeing a series of concrete tactics and strategies in this regard.
I am delighted that OSI asks, at last!
The answer is quite simple, and completely analogous to the rationale
for the funding that is already being provided and recommended by OSI,
JISC and others in order to help start up and fill OA journals:
(I) First, determine the start-up cost of creating an institutional
OA Archive (including any requisite departmental/disciplinary
modularization and customisation). (Southampton can help provide
you with the actual figures; they have the most extensive experience
with this.)
(II) Second, offer to institutions -- exactly the way it is now being
offered to journals and to authors -- to subsidise all or part of
the cost of creating the archive as well as of depositing the papers,
but only:
(III) ON CONDITION that the institution adopts and implements an
official self-archiving policy
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
If you wish, Southampton University can also provide an
instructional/informational package on institutional
self-archiving consisting of:
(i) the OSI Handbook on how and why to create and fill Institutional
OA Archives
http://software.eprints.org/handbook/
(ii) information on the size of the OA citation-impact
advantage to be expected from self-archiving
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
(iii) information on the current growth rate in the number
and size of institutional OA archives
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php
(iv) information on journals' self-archiving policies
http://romeo.eprints.org/
(v) information on other institutions' self-archiving policies:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
(vi) information on how institutional OA self-archiving databases
can be used to measure and evaluate individual and institutional
research performance and impact:
http://citebase.eprints.org/
http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php
http://paracite.eprints.org/cgi-bin/rae_front.cgi
(vii) information on how to answer users' prima facie questions
about self-archiving
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
(viii) information on current national initiatives to mandate
self-archiving:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/3990
3.htm
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&db_id=cp108&r_n=hr636.108&sel=TOC_33
8641&
(ix) Powerpoints for archive administrators and
users, explaining the rationale for self-archiving
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/openaccess.ppt
And last, here are 5 of the reasons for OSI (and other funders interested
in supporting OA) to subsidise institutional OA archive start-up costs:
(1) The cost of subsidising the conversion of an institution to OA
self-archiving is far less than the cost of subsidising the conversion
of a journal to OA-publishing.
(2) The return -- in annual number of OA articles -- on subsidising
the conversion of one institution to self-archiving is far greater
than the return on converting one journal, and far more likely to
propagate to other institutions of its own accord.
(3) Converting one institution to OA self-archiving (unlike converting
one journal to OA publishing) propagates over all institutional
departments/disciplines.
(*This is also the reason why it is so important that the national
self-archiving mandates should be for distributed institutional
self-archiving, as recommended by the UK Select Committee, rather
than for central self-archiving, as recommended by the US House
Committee.*)
(4) The cost -- per resulting OA article -- of subsidising author
OA self-archiving (by providing a start-up proxy archiving service
to help or do it for them) is incomparably lower than the cost --
per resulting OA article -- of subsidising author OA publishing costs.
(5) Converting institutions to self-archiving not only provides
immediate OA for far more articles, but it also paves the way for a
possible (*not certain*!) eventual transition to OA publishing in a
gradual, anarchic way that generates far less resistance and far more
OA -- along with more time and scope for evolution and adaptation --
than trying to convert directly journal by journal.
"The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Oct 04 2004 - 10:12:26 BST