Re: Institutional vs. Central OA Repositories: English translation of Prof. Rentier's posting

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 10:23:11 -0500

On 5-Feb-09, at 9:55 AM, Karen Van Godtsenhoven wrote (in
JISC-REPOSITORIES):

            But that's exactly the problem! I don't think
            research funders like  setting up CR's, they
            just have to because there is no full IR
            coverage, many institutions, don't have them,
            still.

            I'm sure, for example, that the Commission
            would much rather extract metadata/fulltext
            from their researchers' IRs, than having to
            build a new system from scratch. So you can't
            blame them for centralizing it, because there
            would be too many orphans if they wouldn't.

            It's the too-slow-growing  IRs' failure,
            really.


That is exactly what I mean by the need to think the details through:

Both the growth in the number of IRs and the growth in the deposit
rate of existing IRs would be accelerated and facilitated if funders
explicitly stipulated IRs as the designated locus of direct deposit
(with DEPOT taking up the slack until institutions without IRs catch
up). Most important of all, the grpwth in the number of institutional
mandates would be accelerated and facilitated too, if funder mandates
were convergent (on IRs) instead of divergent in their designated
locus of deposit.

Instead, we have empty IRs, an empty DEPOT, few institutional
mandates, and (some) funders insisting on direct central deposit
(others indifferent as to locus -- which still isn't much of a help
to IR and IR mandate growth).

The remedy is simple, but not if we keep invoking the status quo
instead of thinking it through, and doing the simple, obvious fix.

Stevan

       
Van: Repositories discussion list
[mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK] Namens Stevan Harnad
Verzonden: donderdag 5 februari 2009 15:43
Aan: JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Onderwerp: Re: Institutional vs. Central OA Repositories:
English translation of Prof. Rentier's posting
 
 
On 5-Feb-09, at 9:19 AM, Frederick Friend wrote:


      As Professor Rentier acknowledges, "most authors
      are simply not yet depositing their articles at
      all", and I add "often not even when there is an
      institutional mandate in place". In that
      situation criticising the development of CRs would
      seem like cutting off the CR nose to spite the OA
      face. We need more mandates, and we need a higher
      rate of deposit into IRs, but until the day when
      there is100% deposit in 100% of research
      institutions, we should not deny researchers,
      research funders and the taxpayer the benefits of
      having open access to the content that is in CRs.
      We have to work with the reality of funding agency
      support for CRs and secure interoperability between
      as many IRs and CRs as possible.

 
Fred, you are quite right that funder mandates (and CRs) are
extremely welcome, and indeed godsends for the growth of
universal OA. 
 
But the issue here is not whether funder mandates or CRs are
desirable and beneficial. They are, indisputably. The issue
is locus of deposit. 
 
Does it make sense, and does it provide any further benefit at
all, for funder mandates to require direct deposit in CRs,
thereby competing (for author compliance) with actual and
potential institutional mandates, instead of reinforcing them
by converging on IR deposit (and then harvesting into CRs)? 
 
Let us not forget that institutions are the universal providers
of all of OA's target content, funded and unfunded, across all
disciplines, institutions, languages and nations.
 
This very concrete and specific implementational point has to
be brought into focus, rather than blurred with a "let 1000
flowers bloom" stance. 
 
The devil is in the details, insofar as the growth and success
of both mandate adoption and mandate compliance are concerned.
We need to think the details through, carefully, rather than
simply applauding divergent (and even competitive) efforts that
could so easily be modified so as to collaborate and converge,
in the interests of universal OA.
 
Stevan
 
 
Received on Thu Feb 05 2009 - 15:24:05 GMT