Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust For Development, wrote:
> I have been thinking about the ID/OA mandate and the magic button,
> and wondering how readily this is understood outside the AMSCI group and
> other OA-advocates. I have been thinking whether there is another outlet
> where this could be explained in entirly practical terms - ie Step 1,
> Step 2 etc so that this could be copied and quoted for a number of
> different communities.
(1) Making published research articles freely accessible online doubles
their usage and impact, and hence accelerates and augments research
productivity and progress.
http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/
(2) The way to make research articles freely accessible online is by
depositing ("self-archiving") them in the researcher's institution's
Open Access Institutional Repository.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://roar.eprints.org/
(3) Because researchers are still sluggish about depositing their
articles, despite the benefits to them and to their research (only about
15% of articles are currently being self-archived spontaneously), their
institutions and funders worldwide have begun adopting self-archiving
policies that require deposit ("self-archiving mandates").
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
(4) Ninety-four percent of journals have already endorsed self-archiving
in some form.
http://romeo.eprints.org/
(5) But a minority of journals have imposed emargoes, delaying the date
at which articles may be made freely accessible, for six months or even
longer after publication.
(6) In many fields of research, the most important "growth region" for new
findings is within a year of their having been made; and in all fields,
the earlier the access, the sooner and greater the usage and impact.
(7) Hence it is critically important that the deposit of the article
should be immediately upon acceptance of the final, peer-reviewed draft
for publication, not later.
(8) Access to the deposited article can at that time be set immediately
as Open Access, or it can be set as Closed Access during any embargo
period, with only its metadata (author, date, title, journal, abstract,
keywords, etc.) freely accessible webwide till the embargo is over.
(9) During any embargo period, however, a powerful new feature of
Institutional Repositories makes it possible for individual users to
semi-automatically and almost-instantaneously request an individual copy
of the article ("eprint") by email, for individual use -- just as users
had requested reprints by mail in paper days.
(10) This EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST button allows anyone webwide who has
seen the article's metadata (from a google or google scholar search, for
example) to cut/paste their email address in a box and click the button:
The author immediately receives the eprint request together with a URL
that he can click if he wishes to fulfill the user's request. That click then
emails the eprint to the requester.
https://secure.ecs.soton.ac.uk/notices/publicnotices.php?notice=902
The guide to depositing already exists. (Just go to demoprints and
practice it:
http://demoprints.eprints.org/ )
The "button" is then self-explanatory: Users: cut/paste your email address in
it and click. Authors: If you get an email eprint request and wish to
fulfill it, click on the URL "send eprint"...
Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Dec 25 2006 - 01:15:28 GMT