Re: JAIRO (Japanese Institutional Repositories Online)

From: Syun Tutiya <tutiya_at_KENON.L.CHIBA-U.AC.JP>
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:10:47 +0900

Stevan,

Very good to have a dialog with you again. I perfectly agree with you
that "in sum, Japan needs -- and can adopt -- Green OA self-archiving
mandates no more nor less feasibly than every other research-active
country on the planet." I don't know everything about campus politics
or the scholar's way of thinking all over the world, but from my
conversations with and observations of the colleagues both on the
teaching faculty and in the library, I actually suspect that Japan is
not unique with respect to the "passivity" issue. All scholars like
OA and they would say yes if asked to deposit their articles by a
serious and benevolent librarian, though most of the time without any
action of really logging on to their institution's repository.

But I am not convinced that I would deposit should it be mandated on
my campus to deposit. If I should deposit, I would be doing it
because I thought I should, not becaused it was mandated. If I
didn't, I would not because of time or labor but just because I didn't
think I would. If i happen to have an article published by a
"prestigious" journal, my university might reward me materially and/or
morally, or the scholarly society which I am member of might praise me
very cheaply, anyway to my satisfaction. I, as a hedonistic person,
don't have to care about the "real" impact of my work. Unless there
was a chance of being fired because of not depositing, I would not be
inclined to deposit. With some form of mandates, I would just weigh
the consequences of following and not following the mandate. If you
are respected scientist, you will want to have your articles read by
respectable scientists. Such scientists tend to be employed by good
higher education or research institutions, which tend to be rich
enough to subscribe to all good enough journals. You don't have to
read all peer reviewed articles, but you have only to work seriously
on good articles written by good authors. No doubt Hokkaido
University can not afford to subscribe to all journals so that their
researchers have access to all peer reviewed journals, but they have
access probably to all good enough articles. Researchers there can
not help being passive.

So your reference to your Point #29 is quite correct. I agree that
those who are sitty pretty don't understand the relationship between
impact of and access to scholary articles, and so I would be wrong.
But that is how they and we are. We have to change them and must not
keep telling them that they are wrong. Mandating does not seem to me
to change them, but just encourage them to come up with reasons for
not being able to deposit. You will still have to talk to them.

But I agree that it should be possible for our knowledge to be shared
and made accessible by the humankind today and for ever, just because
it is knowledge. There is no doubt about it.

Best,

Syun
Received on Sat Sep 18 2010 - 18:16:52 BST