(wrong string)  : Re: Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy

From: (wrong string) édon Jean-Claude <jean.claude.guedon_at_UMONTREAL.CA>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:29:34 -0400

One more exercise of turning in circles. The main point is that the NIH mandate does not affect at all the way in which institutional repositories develop. If it did, I would like to have very precise and concrete examples...

Let's go once more:

How does 3 follow from 2 in the first response? There is a logical gap here which indeed does not register. And, as it is repeated twice further on in Harnad's answer, one must assume it is one of his strong but mysterious convictions that we must all follow or be treated as heretics.

The NIH mandate is quite effective as is. No need to spend so much time to tweak it further.

Saying that we must deposit first and think about retrieval later is really not good planning. In fact it is quite naive.

If they shop in PMC, why could they not search through PMC as well?

The reference to direct deposit in Google is beside the point, of course. If it is an attempt at humour or irony, it is just that: an attempt.

Researchers use PM to find articles, then go to PMC to retrieve those articles that are in OA. Were they in other deposits, the linkage would be more complex and more fragile.

Finally, Harnad's conclusion is the one I was hoping to see: either you follow my way very narrowly or you contribute to slowing down the progress of OA. In other times and places, i suspect I would end up on a wood pile for ultimate purification of my soul...

Jean-Claude Guédon




-------- Message d'origine--------
De: American Scientist Open Access Forum de la part de Stevan Harnad
Date: jeu. 24/07/2008 13:51
À: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Objet : Re: Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy
 
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:42 AM, Guédon Jean-Claude <
jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca> wrote:

> I agree that a repository without a mandate is ineffective. Consequently,
> arguing that one is not against "institution-external OA depositories"
> while "driving against mandating direct deposit" is more than a little
> disingenuous.

Perhaps if it is shorter, it will register:

(1) I am and have always been an ardent and vocal supporter of NIH's
self-archiving mandate

(2) I am arguing for one tiny but crucial change in its implementational
detail:
stimulate deposit in IRs and harvest to PMC, rather than direct deposit in
PMC

(3) Purpose: To facilitate universal institutional mandates, covering all OA
output, in all fields, funded and unfunded

> Fighting against the mandate is tantamount to ensuring ineffectiveness
> which is of course what Harnad wishes for these "institutional-external OA

> depositories".

I have no idea what disingenuous motives Jean-Claude is attributing to me,
or why.

I am not fighting against the NIH mandate, I am fighting to make it more
effective.

> The distributed solution of IRs remains flaky when it comes to retrieving
articles.

Let's get the articles deposited in there and we'll see how flaky retrieval
proves to be.

> researchers in a given discipline like to go to a one-stop entry point to
> find their documentation.

Fine, let them shop at PMC. But let direct deposit be in the IR, with PMC
harvesting therefrom.

> Perhaps Google will be that universal entry point some time in the future,
> but this is not presently the case...

Wherever OA content is deposited, that is where harvesters -- such as
Google, Oaister, Scirus, Scopus, Web Of Science, Citeseer, Citebase -- or
PMC -- can and will get it.

Or do you think we should be depositing directly in google too?

> For biomedical researchers, knowing that PubMed is the place for
> bibliographic searches *and* document retrieval is a clear advantage.
> [this] amply justifies the decision by NIH to have the research articles
they
> finance deposited in their depository.

PM is not the same as PMC. PM links to PMC. And PMC contains only the
articles that have been made OA.

Mandating OA is amply justified. Harvesting into PMC is amply justified.

Mandating direct deposit in PMC instead of IRs is arbitrary, has no
intrinsic justification, and is counterproductive for the growth of the rest
of OA (across institutions and disciplines, funded and unfunded)

> Furthermore, the NIH deposit does not prevent a parallel deposit in the
local IR.
If the problem were preventing deposits, rather than requiring them, we
would not need any sort of mandate.

The point is that institutions are the research-providers -- of
allresearch, in all disciplines, funded and unfunded. Funder mandates
need to
facilitate institutional mandates, not complicate with them.

> Finally, so long as solutions roughly work in the same direction, let
us agree
> to support them all.

Moving roughly in the direction of OA has already taken a decade and a half.
Let us resolve needless complications that simply delay it more.

Stevan Harnad
Received on Fri Jul 25 2008 - 00:04:13 BST