Andy, Antony, and all,

I'm interested to hear the exact terms upon which several of you are
calling IRs "outdated", as there is absolutely nothing intrinsic in the
principle that disallows the use of the most modern Web technologies
(irrespective if IRs are currently doing so). By this token, Google is
"outdated" because it is using a model developed by search engines in
the 90s. I hope that you aren't simply using "outdated" as a term of
disapprobrium, as this isn't especially helpful.

If you mean to propose that we modernise IRs, that is fine. If you want
to discuss mandates, that is also fine. But it seems to me that it is
nothing to do with the technological attractiveness or otherwise of IRs
that they remain unfilled, as the content that has been deposited is
extremely popular. Simply, you can't attract someone to use a service,
including depositing their own material, while the features that attract
them aren't in place. Since one of these, for academics, is
comprehensive coverage of research content, we have a chicken and egg
situation that one needs to break.

Let's suppose you put together an alternative delivery method that is
not "outdated". Do you seriously think it will work any better until a
majority of the target content backlog is available? If so, you are
kidding yourselves. We are not looking at a picture sharing service or
social networking blog here, where the content is cheap and easy to come
by, and it matters not one whit whether there is comprehensive coverage
or not. Conversely, this is fundamental to academics.

Basically we can't get academics to engage in providing the content
("depositing" in our model) until they view the service as
comprehensive, but it won't be until they provide it! Any system would
face the same problem, because nobody does things in their work (very
different to recreational technologies such as I think you are
suggesting) unless it is a fundamentally necessary part of what they are
trying to achieve. We need to break this circle.

I suggest that you have no workable alternative to the mandate or
mandatory research reporting system model, which is why you posit
further voluntary methods despite the evidence that these consistently
fail. Believe me, I'd rather not insist on a mandatory approach.
However, research reporting has been mandatory for years, so we are
changing nothing, merely integrating it into our online software
provision. I call that modern, not "outdated", though I accept that we
may have work to do on the presentation. At the end of the day, a tool
needs to do its job: a chisel may be outdated, but many agree that it's
the best tool for the job, albeit with minor improvements to its
materials and design. I think I heard you agree yourself, Antony, that
the so-called "Web 2" technologies are in fact a mere collection of
presentational features, minor new protocols and other features, little
different from the continual improvements to the web that we have seen,
many of which are not included in the "Web 2" definition.

I do agree that it would be helpful to improve the attractiveness of
central harvesters, using "Web 2" features, but not that it is a
necessary improvement to the architecture of IRs and harvesting as it
exists at present. If you want people to be able to bookmark papers, get
feeds (as we already can) and all of those things, that is absolutely
fine. Why not just go and write us a new centrally harvesting web
service that presents IR content in a new way?

This "modernity" is either a mirage at best, or else a smokescreen.
Let's be clear about the difference between discussing how to get the
content and presenting it once we have it. Confusing the two serves
nobody's interests. It is pretty clear that by far the best leverage to
get the content is in the institution.

Best wishes,


Talat



-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Antony Corfield
[awc]
Sent: 10 March 2008 17:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving

Andy, we should indeed look outside the narrow IR mandated bunker even
if there a few bullets flying!-)

The fact remains that academics aren't exactly jumping over themselves
to self archive using the (possibly outdated) model that is being pushed
by many here. Unless of course we beat them with a stick. Why is it that
people, academics included, are happy uploading and tagging content on
social sites? It doesn't really matter why, the fact is that it's hugely
popular and you don't need to force people to do it.

So wouldn't it be useful to look at that and find new ways of engaing
academics and encouraging OA? Hell, we could still beat them with a
stick but just for fun!

Regards,
Antony
--
Antony Corfield
ROAD Project
http://road.aber.ac.uk
tel. 01970 628724

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andy Powell
> Sent: 10 March 2008 13:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
>
> Hmmm... the fact that you "have never, ever, ever heard anyone
> refuse
> to use our institution's timetabling software because the user
> interface
> isn't good enough" rather misses the point - or my point at least.
>
> This is not a discussion about whether the user-interface of each IR
> is
> good enough or not.
>
> It's a discussion about what makes one or more repositories grow into
> a
> viable scholarly social network. The UI is a small facet of that...
> what I'm suggesting is that the 'social networking' aspect is more
> important and that we need to understand that aspect rather better
> than
> we do now in order to understand why repositories remain unfilled.
>
> Take something like Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) as a case study -
> albeit one with significant differences to the scholarly repositories
> space in terms of content, responsibilities and the surrounding
> political landscape of scholarly publishing. But bear with me
> nonetheless...
>
> Ask yourself what makes Slideshare such a successful repository of
> presentation-like material - i.e. such a compelling place to surface
> that sort of content on the Web? Yes, part of the answer lies in UI
> type issues. But more fundamentally the answer lies in the network
> effects of a globally concentrated service. Could the functional
> equivalent of Slideshare have emerged by getting people to put their
> presentations on the Web in a distributed manner and then harvesting
> them into a central service? I don't think so. Ditto Flickr, ditto
> YouTube, ditto ...
>
> Having said that, I accept that the blogsphere is a good counter case
> study... because the blogsphere does give us an example of a healthy
> social network built on a distributed based of content, using
> globally
> concentrated services (Technorati, et al.) that harvest that content
> into multiple single places. The interesting question is what makes
> these approaches work (or not) and what we can learn from them to
> help
> fill our repositories (centralised or distributed) without relying
> solely an a "thou must deposit" type approach.
>
> But as I said on eFoundations... imagine a world in which every
> institution mandated to their academics that they must only blog
> using
> an institutional blogging service - would that support or hinder the
> development of a vibrant academic blogging environment?
>
> And before you ask, I wouldn't mandate that people deposit in a
> globally
> concentrated service either - for me, the only mandate that matters
> for
> OA is one that says that scholarly output must be surfaced openly on
> the
> Web.
>
> Andy
> --
> Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
> http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
> http://efoundations.typepad.com/
> [log in to unmask]
> +44 (0)1225 474319
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Repositories discussion list
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr
> > Sent: 10 March 2008 10:30
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> >
> > On 10 Mar 2008, at 09:55, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> >
> > > Brewster Kahle may have the disk space, but if his is to become
> the
> > > global database, then why should individuals have local websites
> at
> > > all? They could all set up shop in the Global Wayback
> > Machine -- or,
> > > for that matter, store directly in Google, saving it the trouble
> of
> > > having to harvest!
> >
> > Brewster or Google can do all they like - if the content
> > ain't there it can't be harvested. People often think that
> > somehow "repositories"
> > are failing, but they're no different from "web sites" in
> > that respect. An examination of research and university web
> > sites show that researchers have out-of-date, incomplete
> > pages and sometimes no pages at all. My own Head of School's
> > home page is just in the form of an FTP listing of some files
> > he occasionally puts there. Others of my senior colleagues
> > have home pages that are over three years old and miss out on
> > describing an entire generation of projects and their outputs.
> >
> > The fundamental problem is not repository software, it is
> > researcher's disinclination to disseminate. And I am
> > convinced that the repository software isn't fundamentally at
> > fault because I have never, ever, ever heard anyone refuse to
> > use our institution's timetabling software because the user
> > interface isn't good enough (though it is appalling), or
> > because it doesn't integrate into their personal calendar (which it
> > doesn't) - they just get on and use it because it does a job
> > they need to do.
> >
> > But that isn't to say that we at won't be working our hearts
> > out trying to make EPrints better and more functional!
> > --
> > Les Carr
> >