Re: Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

I. The expressed needs of faculty generally include posting some 
version of their papers on such a site; when it is available, 
some of them do, and the available evidence hints that the better 
researchers are the more likely to do so. Certainly, it would be 
good if the IR also served other purposes for them and the 
university. A particularly popular one is for the doctoral theses 
from the university, as it is very easy to include such a 
requirement in the list of things the new PhD. must do, than to 
similarly compel the faculty. But most faculty also have papers 
they have written, but never formally published, and that too is 
a natural use for an IR. An IR should be established, using 
whatever of the many reasons have current campus support; it will 
naturally grow to include them all. To me, the main reason for 
starting with an agenda limited to faculty papers is that such a 
site can be very inexpensive. But at many institutions, it seems 
to be easier to gain support for a larger project. If we work in 
the academic world, we must follow its way of doing things, 
however absurd.

II. It would seem reasonable that any supporter of OA or IRs 
should work on whatever aspect where they think they would be 
effective. People who suggest only one direction without 
mentioning the others, are risking harm to OA, for they can have 
no certain knowledge that their way is the best. The previous 
good work leading to the increasing use of OA shows that progress 
has often come from unanticipated directions, while proposals 
that were expected to be successful have failed. People who 
actually reject any of the possible approaches harm OA the more. 
Those who not only advocate working only on their own project, 
but urge people working on other approaches to work only in the 
direction they insist upon, might destroy the cause altogether. 
Those who deny the usefulness of OA altogether are very glad to 
here such people endorse it, for they take it to demonstrate the 
unreasonableness of all OA advocates.

III. What is a true supporter of OA (in whatever form proves to 
work) to do when confronted with such a person? The least likely 
course is to try to convert him to a broader view through 
argument. Yet no one can say his ideas are wrong: no one of us is 
no more likely to guess the future than he. If we ignore him, 
others will think he speaks with the voice of us all. If we 
confront him, we demonstrate disarray to those doubtful of OA.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Anthony Watkinson <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>
Date: Thursday, September 28, 2006 12:19 am
Subject: Re: Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> I have been following the development of institutional 
> repositories with great interest. The first presentation I 
> heard on the topic was from an MIT speaker who explained that 
> the idea was to serve the Academy by providing a place to 
> deposit and preserve material offered by faculty which would 
> mainly be such e- content as reports, learning objects as 
> suchlike. Many librarians I have met (I have just been talking 
> to senior staff in a major Asian library) still seem to retain 
> this understanding.
>
> However, reading the program for the meeting and knowing quite 
> a few of the speakers, I would guess this meeting is all about 
> postprints, mandating and suchlike. Indeed one of the speakers 
> in Glasgow told the Lund meeting that librarians who did not 
> concentrate on this (narrow?) agenda were traitors to the 
> cause.
>
> Do librarians reading this list feel that repositories should 
> be designed to serve faculty and their expressed needs or do 
> they feel that a different agenda is more appropriate to their 
> role in these matters?
>
> Anthony