Thanks Stevan,
You're right, of course, the report does not cover policies. The brief for
the work was to look for practical ways that subject/funder and
institutional repositories can work together within the constraints of the
current policies of their host organisations. There are discussions to be
had at the policy level, but we felt that there were also practical things
to be done now, without waiting for that.
Neil
Stevan Harnad wrote:
> The /JISC/SIRIS "Report of the Subject and Institutional Repositories
> Interactions Study"/
> <http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/259/1/siris-report-nov-2008.pdf>(November
> 2008) "/was commissioned by JISC to produce a set of practical
> recommendations for steps that can be taken to improve the interactions
> between institutional and subject repositories in the UK/" but it fails to
> make clear the single most important reason why Institutional
> Repositories' "/desired 'critical mass' of content is far from having been
> achieved/."
>
> The following has been repeatedly demonstrated (1) in cross-national,
> cross-disciplinary surveys (by Alma Swan
> <http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/openaccessarchive/index.html>, uncited
> in the report) on what authors /state/ that they will and won't do and (2)
> in outcome studies (by Arthur Sale
> <http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/authors/Sale,_AHJ.html>, likewise uncited
> in the report) on what authors /actually do/, confirming the survey
> findings:
>
> *Most authors will not deposit until and unless their universities
> and/or their funders make deposit mandatory
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/>. But if and when
> deposit is made mandatory, over 80% will deposit, and deposit
> willingly. (A further 15% will deposit reluctantly, and 5% will
> not comply with the mandate at all.) In contrast, the spontaneous
> (unmandated) deposit rate is and remains at about 15%, for years
> now (and adding incentives and assistance but no mandate only
> raises this deposit rate to about 30%).*
>
> The JISC/SIRIS report merely states: "/Whether deposit of content is
> mandatory is a decision that will be made by each institution/," but it
> does not even list the necessity of mandating deposit as one of its
> recommendations, even though it is the crucial determinant of whether or
> not the institutional repository ever manages to attract its target
> content.
> Nor does the JISC/SIRIS report indicate how institutional and funder
> mandates reinforce one another
> <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>, nor how
> to make both mandates and locus of deposit systematically convergent and
> complementary (deposit institutionally, harvest centrally
> <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html>) rather
> than divergent and competitive -- though surely that is the essence of
> "/Subject and Institutional Repositories Interactions/."
>
> There are now 58 deposit mandates already adopted worldwide (28 from
> universties/faculties, including Southampton
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Universi
> ty%20of%20Southampton%20School%20of%20Electronics%20and%20Computer%20Scien
> ce>, Glasgow
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Universi
> ty%20of%20Glasgow>, Liège
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Universi
> t%C3%A9%20de%20Li%C3%A8ge>, Harvard
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Harvard%
> 20University%20Faculty%20of%20Arts%20and%20Sciences> and Stanford
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Stanford
> %20University%20School%20of%20Education>, and 30 from funders, including
> 6/7 Research Councils UK
> <http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/outputs/access/default.htm>, European
> Research Council
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European
> %20Research%20Council%20%28ERC%29>and the US National Institutes of Health
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=National
> %20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29>) plus at least 11 known mandate
> proposals pending (including a unanimous recommendation from the European
> Universities Association
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European
> %20University%20Association%20%28EUA%29> council, for its 791 member
> universities in 46 countries, plus a recommendation to the European
> Commission from the European Heads of Research Councils
> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European
> %20Research%20Advisory%20Board%20%28EURAB%29>).
>
> It is clear now that mandated OA self-archiving is the way that the world
> will reach universal OA at long last. Who will lead and who will follow
> will depend on who grasps this, at long last, and takes the initiative.
> Otherwise, there's not much point in giving or taking advice on the
> interactions of empty repositories...
>
> Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C.,
> O'Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S.
> (2005) Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal
> content in UK further and higher education
> <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/>. /Learned Publishing/, 18
> (1). pp. 25-40.
>
>
> *Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>*
--
---------------
Neil Jacobs <n.jacobs_at_jisc.ac.uk>
JISC Executive, Beacon House, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1QU
+44 (0)117 33 10772 / 07768 040179
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Received on Sun Nov 30 2008 - 14:09:28 GMT