 |
 |
Prompted by Peter Suber's OAN blog I looked at something called Twidox <http://www.twidox.com/>http://www.twidox.com/ It's slogan is 'sharing knowledge' and at the top of its Web page is the request to 'Upload your documents now!' Further down it tells us: "Twidox is a free, user generated online library of quality documents that allows individuals and organisations to easily publish, share and search for them, allowing people to share their knowledge and help others with their work, learning, teaching and research." This raises the obvious questions. Why should I upload my documents to Twidox? Would I upload to Twidox? Don't know and No. Nothing noteworthy here. Except, for Twidox substitute IR. For the average researcher, will the answers be any different? On first sight, probably not. That's the 15-100% OA repository problem in a nutshell. IRs have more to offer than Twidox, but how are they different to researchers? Both are Rs, so the answer must be in the I. Yet we hear much about the R - software, metadata, etc. - but little about the I. What does the I mean in the context of IR? The IR needs to be founded on how the I supports the IR, what it says about the IR and what it does with the IR. This needs to be stated clearly and concisely, but how many IRs can do this? For researchers with an institutional attachment, this would mean a lot, but it has to be real. Here is one example that appeared this week, from Boston University <http://www.bu.edu/av/today/slideshows-and-audio/images/OpenAccessInitiative.pdf>http://www.bu.edu/av/today/slideshows-and-audio/images/OpenAccessInitiative.pdf One can argue about the detail and strength of the statement in policy and mandate terms for the repository, but it is clearly putting the I in the IR, right down to the illustration that places the repository among what the I does and who the I is. More exemplars welcome. Steve Steve Hitchcock IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: [log in to unmask] Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865