Re: No Need for Canadian PubMed Central: CIHR Should Mandate IR Deposit

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:48:46 +0100

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, Philip Hunter wrote:

> Stevan,
>
> There is much sense in what you say, in so far as we clearly need a
> repository network architecture in order to underpin scalable and quality
> repository services right up to the global level. However glib statements
> such as 'the IRs are interoperable, because they are all compliant with the
> OAI metadata-harvesting protocol' are not helpful. All the statement means
> is that the IRs have technical interoperability as data and service
> providers (as we used to describe them). It does not mean that the metadata
> which is moved around by means of the harvesting protocol is interoperable
> in any meaningful sense. We need a repository network architecture capable
> of addressing the metadata issues, if we are to have usable global
> services.

Philip,

I am not sure what you mean by the distinction between "technical
interoperability as data and service providers" and "interoperable
in any meaningful sense." I assume you mean some greater level of
functionality that OAI lacks. You may be right about that greater level
of functionality, but the immediate concern of the research community
today is the absence of the target content, not the absence of a greater
level of functionality.

To get that absent target content, we need to mandate deposit. And
that deposit has to be mandated at the level of each researcher's own
Institutional Repository (IRs), not an arbitrary array of independent
Central Repositories (like PubMed Central). The researcher's institution
is the primary research provider, sharing a stake with its researchers
in maximising, monitoring and measuring the visibility, accessibility,
usage and impact of their joint research output. The way to cover all
of research output, systematically and exhaustively, across all
institutions, disciplines and nations, is via researchers' own
institutions, not by creating many independent disciplinary, national,
interdisciplinary, and international Central Repositories.

So by all means work to upgrade the functionality of the IRs and the
OAI. But meanwhile, IRs are certainly good enough to be filled, today,
with just OAI interoperability; and once they are thus filled, the world
research community will be incomparably better off than it is now --
even without the greater level of functionality you (rightly) seek.

And to fill those IRs, now, researchers' institutions and funders need
to mandate deposit in their own IRs -- not in an arbitrary array of
independent disciplinary, national, interdisciplinary, and international
Central Repositories (such as Canadian PubMed Central, which is what my
original posting was about).

Stevan Harnad

> > Researchers' own institutions (universities and research institutes)
> > are the primary providers of all research output. Those researchers,
> > their own institutions, and their funders, are the ones with the joint
> > stake in maximizing the visibility, uptake, usage and impact of their
> > joint research output. That is what the IRs are created for. The IRs
> > are interoperable with one another, because they are all compliant
> > with the OAI metadata-harvesting protocol. That means that their
> > contents -- which it would make no sense to search individually, IR by
> > IR -- can be harvested centrally, by search engines and meta-archives
> > that cover part or all of the distributed IRs' contents (i.e., all of
> > the world's refereed research journal article output).
> >
>
>
> *********************************
> Philip Hunter
> IRIScotland
> Digital Library Division
> Edinburgh University Library
> George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LJ
> Tel: +44 (0)131 651 3768
> *********************************
>
Received on Mon Jun 11 2007 - 14:08:36 BST