Re: Ann Okerson on institutional archives

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:

> Friends:
> 
>  "Ann Okerson weighs the pros and cons of OA for US research libraries,
>    noting that institutional repositories are likely to be expensive, and
>    their focus in the U.S. is likely to be on locally produced scholarly
>    materials other than articles. Consequently: "It is unlikely that
>    under this kind of scenario in the US, scattered local versions of STM
>    articles would compete effectively with the completeness or the value
>    that the publishing community adds." She also suggests that library
>    cost savings resulting from OA journals are "unlikely, unless
>    substantial production cost reductions can be realised by many
>    categories of publisher."  - in Serials: The Journal for the Serials
>    Community 18(1)(2005).
> 
> Why does Ann Okerson, a respected and knowledgeable US academic
> librarian, think that institutional repositories will be expensive? What
> are the facts? Will leading institutions that have set up institutional
> archives tell her and others how much does it cost to set up archives
> and run them.
> 
> Arun

The facts are all contrary to what Ann Okerson states. Not only are
institutional archives not *likely* to be expensive, those that actually
exist are de facto not expensive at all (a $2000 linux server, a few days
sysad set-up time, and a few days a year maintenance). Their focus in the
US and elsewhere is likely to be exactly on what university policy decides
it should be (and the Berlin 3 recommendation, likely to be widely adopted
now, is that the focus should be on university article output). And the
purpose of self-archiving is not and never has been to "compete
effectively with the completeness or the value that the publishing
community adds." It is to provide access to those would-be users whose
institutions cannot afford the journal's official version.

Stevan Harnad