** Cross-Posted **
Bankier, J-G & Perciali, I. (20088) The Institutional Repository
Rediscovered: What Can a University Do for Open Access Publishing
Serials Review (in press)
ABSTRACT: Universities have always been one of the key players in open
access publishing and have encountered the particular obstacle that
faces this Green model of open access, namely, disappointing author
uptake. Today, the university has a unique opportunity to reinvent
and to reinvigorate the model of the institutional repository. This
article explores what is not working about the way we talk about
repositories to authors today and how can we better meet faculty
needs. More than an archive, a repository can be a showcase that
allows scholars to build attractive scholarly profiles, and a platform
to publish original content in emerging open-access journals.
Bankier is President, The Berkeley Electronic Press, Berkeley,
CA 94705, USA
Perciali is Director of Journals, The Berkeley Electronic Press,
Berkeley, CA 94705, USA
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W63-4RS9SPC-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b0ddbf6152e06d538e61bed953d2e817
This article is rather out of date. The authors, B&P, note (correctly)
that Institutional Repositories (IRs) did not fill spontaneously upon
creation. But their article does not mention or take into account
the growing tide of funder and university Green OA self-archiving
mandates.
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
This oversight is perhaps partly because some of the most recent mandates
(European Research Council, NIH, and the unanimous recommendation for a
Green OA self-archiving mandate by the Council of the European University
Association, with 791 universities in 46 countries) came after B&P's
article -- which is very thin on citation or discussion of actual
mandate progress or rationale -- went to press.
So, instead of supporting the current mandates for universities to fill
their IRs with their own published research journal articles, B&P
argue that universities should become Gold OA publishers of their own
research output.
It is not clear whether each university, according to the B&P,
should become the in-house publisher of its own output (in which case
one wonders about peer review and neutrality) or university presses
should simply try to take over more of the existing journals from
commercial and society publishers. Either way, Berkeley Press is here
again recommending spontaneous Gold OA publishing reform (which, in
terms of number of articles for which it has provided OA has been even
slower than spontaneous Green OA self-archiving by authors).
Recommendations have proved resoundingly ineffective (over what will soon
be a decade) in accelerating the transition to 100% OA, whether the
recommendation has been to publishers to convert to Gold OA or to
authors to provide Green OA to what they have published.
Mandates, in contrast, have consistently proved highly effective, in
every instance where they were adopted, and mandates are now growing
rapidly. Researchers comply, and comply willingly. It is apparent that
mandates play the role of welcome facilitation, not unwelcome coercion,
serving to allay author fears about copyright and author uncertainty
about priorities.
But Gold OA cannot be mandated: Only Green OA can be.
So advocates of Gold OA are advised to be patient, and to allow Green OA
mandates to have their beneficial effect, generating 100% OA. Then we
can talk about whether, when and how to convert journals to Gold OA. Not
before.
As to advice to universities on how to make better use of their
IRs in managing and showcasing their research assets: for a much more
current and realistic article, see:
Swan, A. and Carr, L. (2008) Institutions, their repositories
and the Web. Serials Review, 34 (1). ISSN 0098-7913 (In Press)
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14965/1/Serials_Review_article.doc
ABSTRACT: It will soon be rare for research-based institutions not
to have a digital repository. The main reason for a repository is
to maximise the visibility of the institution's research outputs
(provide Open Access), yet few contain a representative proportion
of the research produced by their institutions. Repositories form
one part of the institution's web platform. An explicit, mandatory
policy on the use of the repository for collecting outputs is
needed in every institution so that the full research record is
collected. Once full, a repository is a tool that enables senior
management in research institutions to collate and assess research,
to market their institution, to facilitate new forms of scholarship
and to enable the tools that will produce new knowledge.
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/
