An informative and well-researched paper on Institutional Repositories and
Open Access. [Thanks to the Law Librarian Blog for announcement.]
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2006/12/professional_re_4.html
Parker, Carole A. (2006) Institutional Repositories and the Principle
of Open Access: Changing the Way We Think About Legal Scholarship. New
Mexico Law Review.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=928489
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID947600_code476003.pdf?abstractid=928489&mirid=1
ABSTRACT: Open access to scholarship, that is, making scholarship
freely available to the public via the Internet without subscription
or access fees, is a natural fit for legal scholarship given our
tradition of making government and legal information available to
citizens, and the many benefits that flow from freely disseminating
information for its own sake. Law schools, journals and scholars
should espouse the principle of open access to legal scholarship,
not only for the public good, but also for the enhanced visibility
it provides journals and authors. Open access can be accomplished by
archiving digital works in online institutional repositories. Legal
scholars have enjoyed the benefits of open access to working paper
repositories such as SSRN for more than ten years - even if they
have not thought of this practice as 'open access.' It is a natural
progression for legal scholars to now self-archive published
works as well, and they are beginning to do so as awareness
grows of the benefits of providing open access to published
legal scholarship. Institutional repositories provide new ways to
publish student scholarship, empirical data, teaching materials,
and original historical documents uncovered during the research
process. Author self-archiving does not threaten the existence of law
school-subsidized journals, and institutional repositories generate
new audiences for legal scholarship, including international and
multidisciplinary audiences. Not insignificantly, repositories also
help preserve digital work. Law schools are discovering that the
publicity and download counts generated by repositories provide new
ways to measure scholarly impact and reputation. Approximately 40%
of U.S. law schools now have some form of institutional repository,
all of which are indexed by Internet search engines. Law schools
seeking to establish institutional repositories enjoy a variety of
options to choose from, ranging from proprietary applications like
Digital Commons, SSRN's Legal Scholarship Network, the Berkeley
Electronic Press' Legal Repository, and NELLCO's Legal Scholarship
Repository, to open source applications like EPrints and DSpace.
Received on Mon Dec 18 2006 - 13:52:10 GMT