On 25-Jun-08, at 10:15 AM, Peter Cliff wrote:
> Stevan Harnad wrote:
>>>> (2) The way to remedy keystroke inertia is not to ask for even
>>>> more keystrokes!
>>>
>>> Or any keystrokes - so why bother with repositories at all as by
>>> this premise they are a barrier to self-archiving in themselves?
>> Because OA and IRs are about providing OA to research articles, for
>> researcher use, not about splendid metadata classification schemes
>> for empty IRs...
>
> OK. How then do IRs differ from, say, well managed Web sites?
Let me count a few of the most important ways:
(1) Because OA IRs are OAI-PMH-interoperable and harvestable. (Google
Scholar is already useful, but GOAIgle Scholar will be incomparably
the moreso.)
(2) Because it is harder for an institution to manage, monitor,
archive and harvest wildcat websites than IRs.
(3) Because it is harder for an institution to mandate deposit and
monitor compliance for wildcat websites than IRs.
And, to repeat, the essence of the OAI strategy is minimal tagging so
as to elicit maximal content, not maximal tagging at the risk of
eliciting minimal content. (Once Green OA is safely mandated and being
reliably provided worldwide, go ahead and work to upgrade metadata
requirements; but not now, when the mandates are still meager and the
IRs are still yawningly empty...)
Stevan Harnad
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