Tom Franklin wrote:
> If those interests were real then people would be doing it already. If it
> would help with RAE or REF then a very large number (those who are, or
> would
> like to be, research active) would get involved and do it.
Southampton did that, and it was very successful... but it takes a lot of
commitment at lots of levels to make it work:
- Diktat from the top of the university
- "Hearts and minds" encouragement at a personal level
- Support staff on hand to help and guide depositors
> If my intuition is correct then the purpose of the IR is to provide a
> potentially free alternative source to journals for published papers and
> possibly access to the raw data (presumably linked from the paper).
An IR is like any other web page: it is there to promote.
An IR is specifically to promote the research done at an Institution - after
all, researchers want to work at good/successful research institutions and
institutions want to have well-known researchers working for them.
An IR is all about selling the corporation: some can view it as selling "The
University of Trumpton", others more as selling "Professor Pugh"... either
way, it's a symbiotic relationship: one needs the other.
.... and the big advantage of the openly accessible repository is that
google *does* search it; Yahoo *does* search it; local.live *does* search
it; and, yes, the Intute Repository Search will do too.
IR's, as a concept, are here to stay.
The problem is, as people are saying, how to fill them.
--
Ian Stuart.
Bibliographics and Multimedia Service Delivery team,
EDINA,
The University of Edinburgh.
http://edina.ac.uk/
Received on Mon Mar 10 2008 - 11:28:30 GMT