If I drew a graph of ‘OA understanding vs. role’, I think it would look like a nice exponential decay.

I’m guessing some form of OA advocate/evangelist role would be on the far left, scoring very well – top marks whoever you are :o)

On the right (in the long tail) would be a whole plethora of other roles – many academics and researchers included. Somewhere towards the left would be repository staff, and somewhere in the middle some librarians.

Some librarians, academics, researchers and even repository staff would appear all along the graph.

 

Some institutions and academics are risk averse. I believe ours quite like the fact their perceived risk is managed by someone else. The fact that role is currently covered by the Library is immaterial – in the past we’ve have faculty staff who were OA savvy processing things too.

I don’t necessarily think that the Library ‘wants’ to do this. Here we want to help our academics to do the right thing, and get their stuff out there.

 

For a while I’ve been pondering our process:

Deposit -> Review -> Live.

I want to change it to:

Deposit (direct to live) with mediated access to full text (request button).

In parallel:

- Process full texts (whilst MD record is live) – opening up any that we can.

- Metadata validation/enrichment

 

Does that sound like a better model than we currently use?

 

Cheers,

John

Repository developer, based in a Library

 

 

From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 23 September 2014 15:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Library Vetting of OA Deposits in Institutional Repositories

 

Library legwork is greatly appreciated. But it can never replace the effectiveness of a strong Green OA self-archiving mandate by the institution. 

 

(Nor does library legwork need to replace author finger-work: Authors can fill out their other web-based forms, and write their own cheques. They don’t need anyone else to do it for them. But they do need a mandate to ensure that they do it for themselves.)

 

Peace,

 

Stevan Harnad

 

On Sep 23, 2014, at 9:45 AM, Neil Stewart <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear all,

 

I would be interested to know who, exactly, Prof Harnad believes “those who understand OA far, far better than [librarians] do” actually are (apart from himself, obviously). And while he’s at it, are there any other condescending insults he would like to send the way of those of us who actually do the legwork of facilitating  and explaining open access (building, maintaining and administering repositories on behalf of faculty, then tirelessly advocating for faculty to add material to said repositories)?

 

All the best,

 

Neil

 

From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 23 September 2014 14:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Library Vetting of OA Deposits in Institutional Repositories

 

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 7:35 PM, Andrew A. Adams <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

The challenge now for UK Universities will be to keep librarians out of the
way of reserachers, or their assistants, depositing the basic meta-data and
full text in the repository. At the University of Reading, where I was
involved in early developments around the IR but left the University before
the final deposit mandate (*) was adopted and the process decided on, they
have librarians acting as a roadblock in getting material
uploaded.Thisistotheextentthat a paper published in an electronic proceedings
at a conference was refused permission to be placed in the repository, for
example, while there is a significant delay in deposited materials becoming
visible, while librarians do a host of (mostly useful but just added value
and not necessary) checking. Sigh, empire building and other bureaucratic
nonsense getting in the way of the primary mission - scholarly communications.

(*) They have a deposit mandate but refuse to call it that. I'm not sure why,
butthey insist on calling it a "policy". If one reads this policy, it's a
mandate (albeit not an ideal one). For a University with an overly strong
management team and a mangerialist approach, this unwillingness to call a
spade a spade and a mandate a mandate, seems odd. Perhaps it's that this
policy came from a bottom up development and not a senior management idea so
they're unwilling to give it a strong name.

--
Professor Andrew A Adams                      [log in to unmask]
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/

 

Andrew is so right. 

 

We did the rounds of this at Southampton, where the library (for obscure reasons of its own) wanted to do time-consuming and frustrating (for the author) "checks" on the deposit (is it suitable? is it legal? are the metadata in order?). In ECS we bagged that right away. And now ECS has "fast lane" exception in the university repository (but alas other departments do not). Similar needless roadblocks (unresolved) at UQAM.

 

Librarians: I know your hearts are in the right place. But please, please trust those who understand OA far, far better than you do, that this library vetting -- if it needs to be done at all -- should be done after the deposit has already been made (by the author) and has already been made immediately OA (by the software). Please don't add to publishers' embargoes and other roadblocks to OA by adding gratuitous ones of your own.

 

Let institutional authors deposit and make their deposits OA directly, without intervention, mediation or interference. Then if you want to vet their deposits, do so and communicate with them directly afterward.

 

P.S. This is all old. We've been through this countless times before.

 

Dixit

 

Weary Archivangelist, still fighting the same needless, age-old battles, on all sides... 

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