Just a small enquiry:
Why should we consider PMC's mandate to be a welcome approach, since it
is a central repository, if we are to turn round and say, as below, that
"The various national PMCs are a joke..." and if we ask, as below, "Why
would any user... want to search the world's biomedical literature by
country?"? Because the USA is bigger than these others?! (I'm sure
nobody is arguing that any particular country's research is of
inherently better overall quality than another.) I appreciate, of
course, that a central or subject repository has to be in some country
or other, and thus under its jurisdiction, likely to see its content
from the point of view of that particular country's interests and so on.
In fact, isn't it true that the PMC approach simply conflicts with your
overall message about institutional rather than central repositories
being the best loci of deposit, Stevan? In which case, are you saying
that the PMC mandate is ill-advised? This doesn't seem to fit. I seem to
recall you welcoming the PMC mandate.
(I agree of course that the term "research repository" is quite
imprecise and appears to cover institutional and central/subject
repositories, so it is wrong to say that one of the latter two types can
be "converted" into the former by a mandate, as you point out.)
Just wanting to be clear about how PMC fits into this analysis. Perhaps
I am overlooking a historical explanation for what might seem to be an
anomaly.
Thanks,
Talat
> This just repeats the very same incorrect analysis made earlier: PMC
> is and always was a US central research subject repository for
> refereed biomedical research publications (so are its emulators, for
> their own "national" output). What changed was not that NIH rebaptized
> PMC by "declaring" it a "research repository." What changed was that
> NIH mandated deposit (after two years wasted in the hope that a mere
> "invitation" would do).
>
> The rest is just monkey-see, monkey-do. What those aping the US
> missed, however, was all the rest of OA's target content, funded and
> unfunded -- across all nations, subjects and institutions -- and how
> not only mandating deposit, but mandating convergent institutional
> deposit is essential in order to have universal OA to refereed
> research in all subjects, worldwide.
>
> (The various national PMCs are a joke, and will be quietly rebaptized
> as harvested archival national collections -- if those are desired at
> all -- once worldwide OA content picks up, as institutional deposit
> mandates become universal. The global search functionality will not be
> at the level of all these absurd and superfluous national PMC clones,
> but at the level of global harvesting/search services. Why would any
> user -- peer or public -- want to search the world's biomedical
> literature by country (or institution, for that matter) -- other than
> for parochial actuarial purposes?)
> Stevan Harnad
>
--
Dr Talat Chaudhri
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