On 25-Jun-08, at 9:51 AM, Peter Cliff wrote:
> Stevan Harnad wrote:
>> (1) I will wager everything and anything I own that the main thing
>> that has been holding back IR deposits is keystroke inertia.
>
> Wow! I'm impressed by your conviction (or lack of materialism! :-))!
> However, I'd be curious to know if any repository managers on this
> list agree that keystroke inertia is the main reason. I think the
> picture is vastly more complicated than just keystrokes - the
> mistrust of Open Access and what it might do for an academics career
> for example.
Mistrust of what it would do to an academic's career to make his
published journal articles freely accessible to all users rather than
just those at subscribing universities?
I recommend Alma Swan's two international, cross-disicpline surveys of
what authors actually know, think, do, don't do, and say they would do
-- about OA:
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/
Summary: They don't and won't do the keystrokes -- though they know OA
is good for their careers -- until and unless their institutions and/
or their funders mandate that they do the keystrokes (81% of them
willingly, 14% reluctantly).
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
And Arthur Sale's studies have confirmed that, once the keystrokes are
mandated, authors really do as they said in the surveys they would do.
http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/authors/Sale,_AHJ.html
>> (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 about providing OA to research articles, for
researcher use, not about splendid metadata classification schemes for
empty IRs...
Stevan Harnad
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