On 21-Nov-07, at 7:53 PM, Anthony Watkinson wrote:
I cannot claim to be an expert on institutional
repositories and their
history but the first time I became aware of them was from a
presentation by
Ann Wolpert one the originators of DSpace. It was my
understanding then and
it is my understanding now that for some involved in the IR
movement the
purpose was to provide a service to faculty. The DSpace mission
from one of
the sites reads:
DSpaceT is a free, open source software platform that allows
research organizations to offer faculty and researchers a
professionally managed searchable archive for their digital
assets. DSpace focuses on simple access to these assets, as
well
as their long-term preservation.
It is my understanding that DSpace development was in progress
by
2000.
At the end of 2000. IRs began in 1999-2000, with EPrints, at
Southampton, where CogPrints (designed by Matt Hemus, a Southampton
ECS doctoral student) was first made OAI-compliant and then turned
into EPrints generic IR software by Rob Tansley (likewise a
Southampton ECS doctoral student) in 2000:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD
EPrints was widely adopted and Rob Tansley was then recruited by MIT
and Hewlett-Packard to create DSpace.
http://www.apsr.edu.au/Open_Repositories_2006/speakers.htm
EPrints and DSpace are now the two most widely used IR softwares
worldwide.
http://roar.eprints.org/index.php?action=browse
In 2002 a very different definition was proposed by Raym
Crow in
his SPARC position paper - see
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/ir_final_release_102.pdf. The
definition of IRs set out in his abstract is very different
and
speaks of reforming scholarly communication in line with the
SPARC agenda.
IRs were originally on the right track: OA self-archiving. The SPARC
position paper scrambled that a little with some rather quackish
ideas about publishing reform.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/crow.html
My picture is that SPARC have attempted to hi-jack an
agenda
which was faculty-centred into one which is library-centred,
some
libraries that is. The mandates proposed are only necessary
because faculty persistently refuse to fit in with this new
agenda which does not represent their needs or wishes.
This is a misimpression. The mandates have nothing to do with SPARC
or a hi-jacked agenda.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
They have to do with the fact that busy faculty will not do anything
-- even something that is in their own interests -- unless it is
required. But if self-archiving is required, Alma Swan's surveys have
shown that over 95% of faculty report they will comply, over 80% of
them saying they will comply willingly.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/
And Arthur Sale's studies on actual behavior confirm this: Faculty do
not self-archive in great numbers spontaneously, or if merely
invited, requested or encouraged to do it, whereas they self-archive
at substantially higher rates if it is mandated -- approaching full
compliance within about 2 years.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_10/sale/index.html
This is not surprising, as faculty also comply with publish-or-perish
mandates -- and would publish a good deal less without them
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw64/harnad.html
Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open
Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access
journal
http://romeo.eprints.org/
OR
BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal
if/when
a suitable one exists.
http://www.doaj.org/
AND
in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your
article
in your own institutional repository.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://archives.eprints.org/
http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Thu Nov 22 2007 - 03:53:01 GMT