Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving

From: Alma Swan <a.swan_at_TALK21.COM>
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 16:20:08 -0000

Lee Miller wrote:

> I strongly disagree. Disciplines do share with their own
> researchers a common interest in maximising the visibility,
> usage and impact of their research output. Progress in any
> discipline stands to gain when research results are quickly
> shared with other researchers in that discipline.

But who (or what) are 'disciplines' exactly? Who is it that is sharing the
interest of researchers in maximising their research visibility, etc? Who is
it that can deliver a self-archived literature for that discipline?

The best stab at defining a discipline for this purpose is that it is
composed of a collection of learned societies, professional bodies and
research funders (which happily exist within some disciplines). In other
words, a 'discipline' is a NON-entity - just a collection of various parties
around a subject area. Whilst these may all have the furtherance of the
subject and the maximisation of research visibility at heart (may do; look
at the current evidence and decide for yourself) they are still unlikely to
be anywhere near as effective at implementing successful open access
archives as individual employing institutions, which cover all disciplines
and all researchers within those institutions - funded or not, society
members or not, professionally-affiliated or not.

Alma Swan
Key Perspectives Ltd
Truro, UK
Received on Sun Mar 20 2005 - 16:20:08 GMT