AW: Conflating OA Repository-Content, Deposit-Locus, and Central-Service Issues

From: Armbruster, Chris <Chris.Armbruster_at_EUI.EU>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:15:21 +0100

Stevan Harnard wrote:

Yet the resolution is a simple one-liner: All research institutions
and funders worldwide need to mandate institutional deposit, and then
reap the harvest centrally, with search services, subject
collections,
national collections, language collections, and any other "ideal" on
which hearts are set.
<snip>

Any Internet 101 course will include plenty of examples where
deposit, content and service are assembled within a single site (by
one provider, company etc.) - the list is really very long, from
ArXiv to Amazon, SSRN to Flickr, RePEc to Facebook and so on.
Internet 101 theory will then elucidate why this is so an (e.g.
network effects, economies of scale and so on). Creating thousands of
little repositories was probably never a good idea (and seemingly
based on the fundamental misunderstanding that the Internet may be
conquered by political willpower alone...). No wonder the harvesting,
searching and collecting has never worked.
Nevertheless, we do have all those little and near empty repositories
(more than 1000), and it is thus necessary and useful to consider how
the situation can be improved and repositories given a purpose that
will foster their acceptance by scholars. Acceptance comes through
service.

Chris Armbruster
Received on Mon Nov 30 2009 - 21:45:52 GMT