Re: Prospects for institutional e-print repositories study

From: Chris Rusbridge <c.rusbridge_at_COMPSERV.GLA.AC.UK>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 13:14:18 +0100

With respect, the whole point of the OAI movement (as distinct from ePrints)
is that the metadata is disclosed in a standard form that can be (and is)
harvested by a variety of services. National Libraries are amongst those
that should be considering such services, just as they are considering many
others. OAI makes their tasks easier, and the close identification of most
ePrint repositories with the OAI movement and its protocols means that your
ePrint wins on two counts: longevity since your institution will wish to
sustain evidence of its scholarship, and visibility/accessibility through
the disclosure and harvesting mechanisms.

--
Chris Rusbridge
Director of Information Services, University of Glasgow
GLASGOW G12 8QQ
phone 0141 330 2516   fax 0141 330 5620
email: C.Rusbridge_at_compserv.gla.ac.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK]
> Sent: 15 July 2003 12:47
> To: JISC-DEVELOPMENT_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Prospects for institutional e-print repositories study
>
>
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Barry Mahon wrote:
>
> > one item is missing from the
> > argument, presently, or at least until the widespread self-archiving
> > foreseen by Stevan is achieved: the repositories, primarily National
> > Libraries <viz. Elsevier Royal/NL Library agreement>, keep a record
> > of archived items, so that they can be found. One of the worries
> > of the information community is that self-archiving, even if it is
> > "ready, willing and able to take over" will not be able to replicate
> > this identification.  Inherently  a widely distributed
> archive will be
> > difficult to track, this has been identified as one of the
> 'non-trivial'
> > issues to be dealt with for the implementation of the Semantic Web.
>
> The Elsevier/NL kind of agreement -- as noted in the many
> passages quoted
> in http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2888.html --
> is between the *publisher* and *deposit library* and concerns the
> publication itself. That is quite normal, and can and should
> be extended
> to the entire peer-reviewed journal literature of 20,000 journals and
> 2,000,000 annual articles -- entirely independently of any open-access
> or self-archiving considerations, with which it has nothing
> at all to do!
>
> Self-archiving concerns a *supplementary* version -- a "back-up",
> if you like -- of that primary corpus of 20,000/2,000,000. What that
> supplementary corpus needs is not *preservation* (the primary version
> needs preservation), but *creation*, for the sake of immediate access
> and impact (currently being lost, daily) for all would-be
> users web-wide
> whose institutions cannot afford the toll access to the primary
> (publisher's) version.
>
> Right now, that supplementary access is barely existent:
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt
> If "one of the worries of the information community" is about the
> indentification and tracking of those supplementary self-archived
> items, then that worry is misplacedr: it should be redirected to the
> identification and tracking of the primary versions of those articles
> (the publisher/deposit-library versions).
>
> The pressing worry today (and it is a worry of the research community)
> is *access* (and *impact*), not preservation. The solution is
> to self-archive the supplementary versions, not to re-duplicate the
> preservation problem of the primary corpus, for a still
> near-non-existent
> secondary incarnation!
>
> Start worry about the preservation of the supplementary corpus only if
> and when it looks as if it might become the primary corpus. It can't
> even dream of doing that until it at least exists!
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
>
>     http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
>                             or
>     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
>
> Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
>

Received on Tue Jul 15 2003 - 13:14:18 BST