You can repeat the IR mantra as many times as you like... it doesn't
make it true.

Despite who knows how much funding being pumped into IRs globally (can
anyone begin to put a figure on this, even in the UK?), most remain
largely unfilled and our only response is to say that funding bodies and
institutions need to force researchers to deposit when they clearly
don't want to of their own free will.  We haven't (yet) succeeded in
building services that researchers find compelling to use.

If we want to build compelling scholarly social networks (which is
essentially what any 'repository' system should be) then we might be
better to start by thinking in terms of the social networks that
currently exist in the research community - social networks that are
largely independent of the institution.  

Oddly, to do that we might do well to change our thinking about how best
to surface scholarly content on the Web to be both 1) user-centric
(acknowledging that individual researchers want to take responsibility
for how they surface their content, as happens, say, in the blogsphere)
and 2) globally-centric (acknowledging that the infrastructure is now
available that allows us to realise the efficiency savings and social
network effects of large-scale globally concentrated services, as
happens in, say, Slideshare, Flickr and so on).

Such a change in thinking does not rule the institution out of the
picture, since the institution remains a significant stakeholder with
significant interests... but it certainly does change the emphasis and
direction and it hopefully stops us putting institutional needs higher
up the agenda than the needs of the individual researcher.

Andy
--
Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
http://efoundations.typepad.com/
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+44 (0)1225 474319 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 08 March 2008 21:15
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> 
> On Sat, 8 Mar 2008, Andy Powell wrote:
> 
> > This topic may well have been discussed since 1999 - unfortunately 
> > much of that discussion (at least at a technical level) has not 
> > acknowledged that the Web has changed almost immeasurably 
> between then and now.
> > Web 2.0, social networks, Amazon S3, the cloud, 
> microformats, Google 
> > sitemaps, REST, the Web Architecture, ... I could go on.
> >
> > The technical landscape is now so completely different to 
> what it was 
> > when the OAI-PMH was first discussed that it makes no sense 
> to apply a
> > 1999 design approach to the space, which is effectively 
> what we are doing.
> 
> The Web has alas progressed a lot more since 1990 than OA 
> target content on the Web has done.
> 
> And none of the changes in the Web are relevant to the issue 
> of whether the locus of direct deposit of OA content should 
> be convergent -- in researchers' own IRs or divergent, in 
> thematic CRs.
> 
> The bottom line is that OA content should be deposited 
> directly where we can ensure that all of it will indeed be 
> speedily and systematically deposited at long last -- and 
> that locus is each authors' own university IR, because 
> universities (and research institutions) worldwide are the 
> providers of all that OA content, both funded and unfunded, 
> across all disciplines and themes -- the ones with the both 
> interest and the means to mandate, monitor and co-benefit 
> from storing and showcasing their own research output.
> 
> The rest -- including all Web 2.0 etc. benefits -- are all 
> there for the having at the harvester level. IRs are for 
> direct deposit.
> 
>      "How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates"
>      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html
> 
>      "Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit Institutionally, Harvest
>      Centrally"
>      http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15002/1/nihx.html
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-
> Access-Forum.html
>      http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
> 
> UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
> If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing 
> Open Access to your own research article output, please 
> describe your policy at:
>      http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
>      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
>      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
> 
> OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
>      BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable 
> toll-access journal
>      http://romeo.eprints.org/
> OR
>      BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access 
> journal if/when
>      a suitable one exists.
>      http://www.doaj.org/
> AND
>      in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of 
> your article
>      in your own institutional repository.
>      http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
>      http://archives.eprints.org/
>      http://openaccess.eprints.org/
>