Open Access Archivangelism

SUMMARY: The answer to the question of whether longstanding Arxiv self-archivers need either change their locus of deposit or do double the keystrokes if they are to deposit their papers in both Arxiv and their own Institutional Repositories (IRs) is that this can now be accomplished automatically, depositing only once, thanks to the IR software's SWORD import/export functionality. A second question is whether central harvesters of distributed IRs can provide (at least) the same functionality as direct-deposit central repositories (or even better). The provisional reply is that they can, for example, by building the functionality on top of the Celestial OAI-PMH harvester. It is now important and timely to demonstrate this capability technically, in the service of OA's fundamental objective: Getting the OA IRs filled. The demonstration that central harvesting of distributed IR deposits can not only duplicate but surpass the functionality of direct central deposit should help encourage funders to adopt the convergent IR deposit mandates that facilitate the adoption of complementary mandates by the universal provider of research output: the worldwide network of institutions (OA's "sleeping giant") -- rather than divergent mandates that fail to encourage (or even discourage) institutional mandates.

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Physicist (anonymous):

"If you want to convince me [that institutional self-archiving plus central harvesting can provide all the functionality of Arxiv], then try to do so by conducting the following experiment with any... "harvesting" vehicles you like: 

    (1) Choose an area, such as Mathematical Physics, or Integrable Systems, and find all the papers that have been deposited in any of the archives that they cover, within the past week.  (If they cover 95% of the arXiv, they must necessarily producethis information just as well). No other barrage of junk; just that simple list of papers. 

    (2) Do the same with respect to all the posted publications by a given author for the past ten years. Again: not a barrage of google-like junk dumped upon you, but this specific information. (If I want a ton of junk, I can also go to Google scholar, and waste endless time trying to find what I need.) 

    (3) Find out, at one go, if a given article, or set of articles, from the above list,  has been published in a journal , and what the journal reference is.  

    (4) Get a copy of any of these articles, at once, in any convenient format, like .pdf, that is available.

    (5) Be equally sure that all the above is simultaneously done for all such articles deposited in individual institutional repositories.

"If you can do all the above, successfully, you will have given the 'proof of principle'."

Les Carr (ECS, Southampton):

"I think we can reasonably build the required functionality on top of the Celestial OAI-PMH harvester. The "proof of concept" project would need to fund a server to allow registered users to subscribe to alerting emails, based on searches over the "recently added" OAI metadata held in Celestial." 

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Note: This is not about the relatively trivial issue of whether longstanding Arxiv self-archivers need either to change their locus of deposit or to do double the keystrokes in order to deposit their papers in both Arxiv and their IRs: That can be accomplished automatically, depositing only once, by the IR software's SWORD import/export functionality. 

This is instead about whether central harvesters of distributed IRs can indeed provide (at least) the same functionality as direct-deposit central repositories (or even better). The provisional reply is that they can, but it is now important and timely to demonstrate this technically.

The functionality question is extremely important for another matter: Getting the IRs filled. It has become clear that deposit mandates are needed in order to fill repositories (whether central or institutional) with OA's target content: the 2.5 million articles per year published in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed journals, in all disciplines and languages, and originating from all the world's research institutions (universities, mostly).

OA deposits need to be mandated by all the world's research institutions, the research providers, reinforced by deposit mandates from the funders of the funded subportion of that research. The universal adoption of these deposit mandates needs to be facilitated and accelerated: There have only been 61 adopted so far (from 31 institutions and 30 funders). The institutional mandates cover all research output, whereas the funder mandates only cover funded research. But whereas an institutional mandate covers all research output, cutting across all fields, funded and unfunded, from that institution alone, a funder mandate covers only funded research, usually only in one or a few fields; however, it cuts across many institutions. 

Hence a funder mandate that requires institutional IR deposit (followed by optional automatized central harvesting or export) also simultaneously serves to stimulate, motivate and reinforce the adoption of institutional mandates by each of its funded institutions, to cover the rest of each institution's own research output, across all fields, funded and unfunded. In contrast, a funder mandate that requires direct deposit in an institution-external, central repository (1) touches only the research output that it funds, (2) fails to propagate so as to facilitate the adoption of complementary institutional mandates for all the rest of institutional research output -- and even (3) competes with institutional mandates by (giving the appearance of) necessitating double-deposit were the institution to contemplate adopting a deposit mandate of its own too. 

In reality, of course, the SWORD automatic import/export capability moots any need for double-deposit, but this is not yet widely known or understood; and even without double-deposit as a perceived deterrent, divergent funder mandates, needlessly requiring direct institution-external deposit, simply miss the opportunity to provide the synergy and incentive for the adoption of complementary institutional mandates that convergent funder mandates, requiring institutional IR deposit (plus optional central harvesting) do.

Hence the demonstration that central harvesting of distributed IR deposits can not only duplicate but surpass the functionality of direct central deposit should help encourage funders to adopt the convergent IR deposit mandates that facilitate the adoption of complementary mandates by the universal provider of research output, the worldwide network of institutions (OA's "sleeping giant"), rather than divergent mandates that fail to encourage (or even discourage) institutional mandates.

"Deposit Institutionally, Harvest Centrally"

"Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit Institutionally, Harvest Centrally"

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

SUMMARY: An Indiana University study (on the Institutional Repository of the University of Southampton) by Xia (2008) has tested the hypothesis that physicists who already habitually self-archive in an Open Access (OA) Central Repository (Arxiv) would be more likely to self-archive in their own institution's OA Institutional Repository (IR). The outcome of the study was that the hypothesis is incorrect: If anything, veteran Arxiv self-archivers are more resistant to IR deposit than ordinary nonarchivers, because they neither wish to change their longstanding locus of deposit, nor do they wish to double-deposit.
   This outcome is quite natural and to be expected. The solution for this relatively small population of seasoned self-archivers is for their institution-external deposits to be automatically imported back into their IRs using the SWORD protocol (which can also be used to export automatically from IRs to central repositories). There is no need for veteran self-archivers to change their practices or to double-deposit.
   It is not the 15% of authors who already self-archive (whether institution-externally or on their own institutional websites) that are the problem for OA: The problem is the 85% who do not yet self-archive. It is in order to set the keystrokes of those nonarchivers in motion at long last -- for their own benefit and that of their employing institutions as well as the tax-paying public that funds their research -- that Green OA self-archiving mandates are now being adopted by their institutions and funders.
   When researchers have been polled (by Alma Swan & Sheridan Brown), the vast majority (95%), across all fields, have responded that they would comply with self-archiving mandates by their institutions and/or their funders (over 80% of them reporting that they would comply willingly). And actual outcome studies (by Arthur Sale) have confirmed that this is indeed what happens, with near-100% self-archiving rates reached within about two years once mandated -- but continuing to languish at the baseline 15% self-archiving rate (30% with incentives ad assistance) if left unmandated.

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Xia, J. (2008) A Comparison of Subject and Institutional Repositories in Self-archiving Practices. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 34 (6):489-495.

(1) The Xia (2008) study's finding is quite correct that many more Southampton physicists self-archive centrally in Arxiv rather than institutionally in Southamtpon University's Institutional Repository (IR). If the same study had been conducted at any other university, the outcome would almost certainly have been identical. The reason is that physicists have been self-archiving centrally in Arxiv since 1991, and today, quite understandably, they have no desire either to switch to local IR self-archiving or to do double-depositing.

(2) This was already known at Southampton, and other institutions know it about their own physicists.

(3) Consequently, it is not at clear why anyone would have expected the opposite result, namely, that longstanding Arxiv self-archivers would be quite happy to switch to local IR self-archiving, or to do double-depositing!

(4) In reality, the problem -- for both OA and for IRs -- is not the physicists who are already self-archiving, regardless of where they are self-archiving. If all researchers were doing what the physicists have been doing since 1991 (and computer scientists have been doing since even earlier), 100% OA would be long behind us, and IRs could all be filled, if we wished, trivially, by simply importing back all their own institution-external deposits, automatically, using something like the SWORD protocol.

(5) The real problem is hence not the minority of spontaneous self-archivers of long standing (globally, spontaneous self-archiving overall hovers at about 15% overall); the problem is the vast majority, which consists of nonarchivers: Of OA's target content -- the annual 2.5 million articles published in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed journals, across all disciplines and institutions -- 85% is not yet being self-archived. It is for that reason that self-archiving mandates have proved to be necessary.

(6) In choosing to analyze the data on Southampton -- which is indeed a hotbed of OA, OA IRs, OA self-archiving, and OA self-archiving mandates -- this study has unfortunately chosen to analyze the wrong IR and the wrong mandate! It is Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) that has the planet's first and longest standing self-archiving mandate (since 2002-2003), and it is the ECS IR that has a full-text deposit rate near 100%. 

(7) The 2008 study analyzed the self-archiving rate for physicists, in the university-wide IR. But the University as a whole only has a university-wide mandate (and a rather vague one) since April 2008, and even that has not yet been publicized or implemented yet. (The university did have a longer standing requirement to enter metadata in the IR for the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), mostly by library proxy deposit, which is why the study found so many abstracts without full texts therein, for there was no requirement to deposit the full text.)

(8) As a consequence, the study's findings -- although quite accurate regarding the general resistance of veteran Arxiv self-archivers to self-archiving alternatively or additionally in their own institution's IR -- do not really have any bearing on mandates and mandated IR behavior in general.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum