Alma -
The figures from your unpublished study presented earlier this
morning are very interesting.
Are the 5 institutions that have OA policies (and hence relative ease
in collecting content), the same as the 5 institutions that require
researchers to deposit items themselves? I am wondering whether the
effectiveness of OA mandating obscures the impact of who actually
does the depositing.
Any research on the relative effectiveness of IR procedures (not just
policies) could be most helpful in the efforts to recruit content.
Some personal observations that to me suggest areas where research
would be desirable:
As an author, what I most prefer is a repository where I am allowed
to deposit my own work with minimal intervention. Ideally, I would
like to see my deposit appear immediately in the archive. If there
is a need for checking, ideally this occurs after the article
appears, or is done very, very quickly. It makes sense to me that
other authors would like this service as well. If you are depositing
an item to have a URL to report to your funder, or to share the item
with colleagues, you want to have the URL immediately, not a few days
later. In other words, I would predict a correlation between
directness and immediacy of author deposit with success in recruiting
content. The repository that posts immediately would have the most
success, otherwise, the more immediate the posting, the greater the
probability of success.
As an E-LIS Editor I have found that we have had the most success
when we deposit on behalf of the authors. (E-LIS has many Editors,
and takes care to be sure that documents are approved promptly).
After authors experience the benefits of self-archiving this way,
perhaps they are more likely to deposit themselves in future?
Research on this would be desirable.
I hope all these great research ideas and work-in-progress is being
noted on the Open Access Directory, at:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page
Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and
does not represent the opinions or policy of BC Electronic Library
Network or Simon Fraser University Library.
Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
Received on Sun Jul 27 2008 - 20:31:14 BST