Re: subject classification

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:33:40 -0400

On 25-Jun-08, at 10:15 AM, Peter Cliff wrote:

> Stevan Harnad wrote:
> > > > (2) The way to remedy keystroke inertia is not to ask for even more
> > > > keystrokes!
> > >
> > > Or any keystrokes - so why bother with repositories at all as by this
> > > premise they are a barrier to self-archiving in themselves?
> > Because OA and IRs are about providing OA to research articles, for
> > researcher use, not about splendid metadata classification schemes for
> > empty IRs...
>
> OK. How then do IRs differ from, say, well managed Web sites?


Let me count a few of the most important ways:

(1) Because OA IRs are OAI-PMH-interoperable and harvestable. (Google
Scholar is already useful, but GOAIgle Scholar will be incomparably the
moreso.)

(2) Because it is harder for an institution to manage, monitor, archive and
harvest wildcat websites than IRs.

(3) Because it is harder for an institution to mandate deposit and monitor
compliance for wildcat websites than IRs.

And, to repeat, the essence of the OAI strategy is minimal tagging so as to
elicit maximal content, not maximal tagging at the risk of eliciting minimal
content. (Once Green OA is safely mandated and being reliably provided
worldwide, go ahead and work to upgrade metadata requirements; but not now,
when the mandates are still meager and the IRs are still yawningly empty...)

Stevan Harnad
Received on Wed Jun 25 2008 - 16:23:25 BST