There remains a lot to be done to institute IR deposit mandates. However, we
appear to be finally seeing real progress on this.
I would like to start a policy debate on how we follow this up. Current
mandates focus on new material, possibly including the back catalogue of
publications by academics in post, although this might be tricky for both
legal (mandating deposit of material published while at a previous
institution) and practical (lack of easy availability of suitable electronic
copies) reasons.
While in many disciplines, such as medicine, the availability of very recent
material is of the greatest importance and need, material in all disciplines
remains highly useful. In other disciplines, particularly in mathematics,
arts and humanities, older material can be equally, or even more, useful than
current material. For example, my own PhD thesis (1997) required the
referencing of works from the 30s and 50s as well as material from the 80s
and 90s.
So, the question I believe we should begin to consider is how we will provide
"Open Access to the Past". I think the major issues here are:
- Obtaining electronic copies of material;
- Producing Meta-data from lower quality electronic copies;
- Copyright issues;
- Retired authors and deceased authors;
- Co-author issues.
So, while the fight for open access to the present and future is not yet won,
we should begin to consider open access to the past as well.
--
*E-mail*a.a.adams_at_rdg.ac.uk******** Dr Andrew A Adams
**snail*27 Westerham Walk********** School of Systems Engineering
***mail*Reading RG2 0BA, UK******** The University of Reading
****Tel*+44-118-378-6997*********** Reading, United Kingdom
Received on Fri Feb 23 2007 - 18:25:07 GMT