[ The following text is in the "WINDOWS-1252" character set. ]
[ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ]
[ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
Everyone seems to be miscounting: dividing by the wrong denominator (or not
counting at all)
The only relevant question is
What percent of annual institutional OA target output (i.e. refereed
postprints) is being made OA in the various different ways:
(1) Anywhere online, unmandated
(2) In an IR, unmandated
(3) in a CR, unmandated
(4) In an IR, mandated
(5) In a CR, mandated
Note that absolute numbers are of no interest in any of these cases: only
percentages of institutional annual postprint output are.
Note that the denominator for CRs is far bigger: The number of postprints
deposited must be divided by all the postprints from all the IRs producing
the CR content.
The baseline to beat is about 5-15% (the spontaneous unmandated OA
self-archiving rate.)
No happy stories about how researchers take to social networking like fish
to water answer any of these questions, or provide any of these figures.
These are not bullets, they are just methodological and logical criteria for
drawing meaningful conclusions from objective data.
Stevan Harnad
On 08-03-10, at 13:31, Antony Corfield [awc] wrote:
> Andy, we should indeed look outside the narrow IR mandated bunker even if
> there a few bullets flying!-)
>
> The fact remains that academics aren't exactly jumping over themselves to
> self archive using the (possibly outdated) model that is being pushed by
> many here. Unless of course we beat them with a stick. Why is it that
> people, academics included, are happy uploading and tagging content on
> social sites? It doesn't really matter why, the fact is that it?s hugely
> popular and you don't need to force people to do it.
>
> So wouldn't it be useful to look at that and find new ways of engaing
> academics and encouraging OA? Hell, we could still beat them with a stick
> but just for fun!
>
> Regards,
> Antony
> --
> Antony Corfield
> ROAD Project
> http://road.aber.ac.uk
> tel. 01970 628724
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> > REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Andy Powell
> > Sent: 10 March 2008 13:16
> > To: JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> >
> > Hmmm... the fact that you "have never, ever, ever heard anyone
> > refuse
> > to use our institution's timetabling software because the user
> > interface
> > isn't good enough" rather misses the point - or my point at least.
> >
> > This is not a discussion about whether the user-interface of each IR
> > is
> > good enough or not.
> >
> > It's a discussion about what makes one or more repositories grow into
> > a
> > viable scholarly social network. The UI is a small facet of that...
> > what I'm suggesting is that the 'social networking' aspect is more
> > important and that we need to understand that aspect rather better
> > than
> > we do now in order to understand why repositories remain unfilled.
> >
> > Take something like Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) as a case study -
> > albeit one with significant differences to the scholarly repositories
> > space in terms of content, responsibilities and the surrounding
> > political landscape of scholarly publishing. But bear with me
> > nonetheless...
> >
> > Ask yourself what makes Slideshare such a successful repository of
> > presentation-like material - i.e. such a compelling place to surface
> > that sort of content on the Web? Yes, part of the answer lies in UI
> > type issues. But more fundamentally the answer lies in the network
> > effects of a globally concentrated service. Could the functional
> > equivalent of Slideshare have emerged by getting people to put their
> > presentations on the Web in a distributed manner and then harvesting
> > them into a central service? I don't think so. Ditto Flickr, ditto
> > YouTube, ditto ...
> >
> > Having said that, I accept that the blogsphere is a good counter case
> > study... because the blogsphere does give us an example of a healthy
> > social network built on a distributed based of content, using
> > globally
> > concentrated services (Technorati, et al.) that harvest that content
> > into multiple single places. The interesting question is what makes
> > these approaches work (or not) and what we can learn from them to
> > help
> > fill our repositories (centralised or distributed) without relying
> > solely an a "thou must deposit" type approach.
> >
> > But as I said on eFoundations... imagine a world in which every
> > institution mandated to their academics that they must only blog
> > using
> > an institutional blogging service - would that support or hinder the
> > development of a vibrant academic blogging environment?
> >
> > And before you ask, I wouldn't mandate that people deposit in a
> > globally
> > concentrated service either - for me, the only mandate that matters
> > for
> > OA is one that says that scholarly output must be surfaced openly on
> > the
> > Web.
> >
> > Andy
> > --
> > Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
> > http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
> > http://efoundations.typepad.com/
> > andy.powell_at_eduserv.org.uk
> > +44 (0)1225 474319
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Repositories discussion list
> > > [mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr
> > > Sent: 10 March 2008 10:30
> > > To: JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > > Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> > >
> > > On 10 Mar 2008, at 09:55, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> > >
> > > > Brewster Kahle may have the disk space, but if his is to become
> > the
> > > > global database, then why should individuals have local websites
> > at
> > > > all? They could all set up shop in the Global Wayback
> > > Machine -- or,
> > > > for that matter, store directly in Google, saving it the trouble
> > of
> > > > having to harvest!
> > >
> > > Brewster or Google can do all they like - if the content
> > > ain't there it can't be harvested. People often think that
> > > somehow "repositories"
> > > are failing, but they're no different from "web sites" in
> > > that respect. An examination of research and university web
> > > sites show that researchers have out-of-date, incomplete
> > > pages and sometimes no pages at all. My own Head of School's
> > > home page is just in the form of an FTP listing of some files
> > > he occasionally puts there. Others of my senior colleagues
> > > have home pages that are over three years old and miss out on
> > > describing an entire generation of projects and their outputs.
> > >
> > > The fundamental problem is not repository software, it is
> > > researcher's disinclination to disseminate. And I am
> > > convinced that the repository software isn't fundamentally at
> > > fault because I have never, ever, ever heard anyone refuse to
> > > use our institution's timetabling software because the user
> > > interface isn't good enough (though it is appalling), or
> > > because it doesn't integrate into their personal calendar (which it
> > > doesn't) - they just get on and use it because it does a job
> > > they need to do.
> > >
> > > But that isn't to say that we at won't be working our hearts
> > > out trying to make EPrints better and more functional!
> > > --
> > > Les Carr
> > >
Received on Mon Mar 10 2008 - 20:13:59 GMT