On 30-Nov-08, at 9:08 AM, Neil Jacobs (JISC) wrote:
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.
Hi Neil,
I was referring to the JISC report's recommendations, which mention a
number of things, but not how to get the repositories filled (despite
noting the problem that they are empty).
It seems to me that the practical problems of what to do with -- and
how to work together with -- empty repositories are trumped by the
practical problem of how to get the repositories filled.
Moreover, the solution to the practical problem of how the
repositories (both institutional and subject/funder) can work
together is by no means independent of the practical problem of how
to get them filled -- including the all-important question of the
locus of direct deposit:
The crucial question (for both policy and practice) is whether direct
deposit is to be divergent and competitive (as it is now, being
sometimes institutional and sometimes central) or convergent and
synergistic (as it can and ought to be), by systematically mandating
convergent institutional deposit, reinforced by both institutional
and funder mandates, followed by central harvesting -- rather than
divergent, competing mandates requiring deposits willy-nilly,
resulting in confusion, understandable resistance to divergent or
double deposit, and, most important, the failure to capitalize on
funder mandates so as to reinforce institutional mandates.
Institutions, after all, are the producers of all refereed research
output, in all subjects, and whether funded or unfunded. Get all the
institutions to provide OA to all their own refereed research output,
and you have 100% OA (and all the central harvests from it that you
like).
As it stands, however, funder and institutional mandates are pulling
researchers needlessly in divergent directions. And (many) funder
mandates in particular, instead of adding their full weight behind
the drive to get all refereed research to be made OA, are thinking,
parochially, only of their own funded fiefdom, by arbitrarily
insisting on direct deposit in central repositories that could easily
harvest instead from the institutional repositories, if convergent
institutional deposit were mandated by all -- with the bonus that all
research, and all institutions, would be targeted by all mandates.
It is not too late to fix this. It is still early days. There is no
need to take the status quo for granted, especially given that most
repositories are still empty.
I hope the reply will not be the usual (1) "What about researchers
whose institutions still don't have IRs?": Let those author's
deposit provisionally in DEPOT for now, from which they can be
automatically exported to their IRs as soon as they are created,
using the SWORD protocol. With all mandates converging systematically
on IRs, you can be sure that this will greatly facilitate and
accelerate both IR creation and IR deposit mandate adoption. But with
just unfocussed attempts to accommodate to the recent, random, and
unreflecting status quo, all that is guaranteed is to perpetuate it.
Nor is the right reply (2) "Since all repositories, institutional and
subject/funder, are OAI-interoperable, it doesn't matter where
authors deposit!" Yes, they are interoperable, and yes, it would not
matter where authors deposited -- if they were indeed all depositing
in one or the other. But most authors are not depositing, and that is
the point. Moreover, most institutions are not mandating deposit at
all yet and that is the other point. Funder mandates can help induce
institutions -- the universal research providers -- to create IRs and
adopt institutional deposit mandates if the funder mandates are
convergent on IR deposit. But funder mandates have the opposite
effect if they instead insist on central deposit. So the fact that
both types of repository are interoperable is beside the point.
Une puce à l'oreille (not to be confused with a gadfly),
Stevan Harnad
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=University
%20of%20Southampton%20School%20of%20Electronics%20and%20Computer%20Science>,
Glasgow<
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=University
%20of%20Glasgow>, Liège<
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Universit%
C3%A9%20de%20Li%C3%A8ge>, Harvard<
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Harvard%20
University%20Faculty%20of%20Arts%20and%20Sciences>
and Stanford<
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Stanford%2
0University%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%2
0Research%20Council%20%28ERC%29>and the US
National Institutes of Health<
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=National%2
0Institutes%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%2
0University%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%2
0Research%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 - 15:33:11 GMT