Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component

[David Stern <david.e.stern@yale.edu>]

Stevan, I think you missed the key point I was making.

I certainly endorse the creation of Institutional Repositories for OA
access.

However, I believe that a call for practical OA *requires* a platform for
the people who do not belong to IR-capable institutions.

If you want additional content provision, the best way is to build an
inclusive set of materials worthy of trusted searching. This might
seriously influence the existing scholarly network. According to recent
reports, over 25% of authors are not even in academic settings, and many
academic institutions do not yet have IRs.

I was stating that for self-archiving to be a serious movement in terms of
critical amounts of material it would need to develop a full range of free
and universal servers such as the subject-specific server Thomas Krichel
has identified:

  The RePEc digital library for economics is a model in that direction.
  It is  based on over 450 different archives based at economics
  departments in universities and some government institutions
  such as central banks. Around 10 differnent user services
  collaborate to manage the data and make it available to
  end users. See http://repec.org.

Build a universal set of repositories and people will add their material.  
Limit this OA action to primarily the authors in institutions with
existing IRs (and a few subject servers) and you will not build a powerful
incentive for the excluded.

David Stern

At 08:34 PM 5/5/2005, you wrote:

> On Wed, 4 May 2005, David Stern wrote:
>
> > While Stevan's push for 100% coverage of academic materials within OA
> > repositories is on target, I still believe that we need a more reliable
> > and universal infrastructure for decentralized repositories ... one that
> > includes long-term support, which means funding for all authors and
> > organized R&D for enhanced navigation.
>
> All funding and support are of course welcome, but please, please let us
> not lose sight (yet again) of the fact that the problem is not that the
> cupboards are not *there* but that they are (85%) *bare*!
>
>     http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=analysis
>     http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=analysis
>     http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm
>
> That means the immediate problem is *not* an insufficiently reliable and
> universal infrastructure or insufficiently enhanced navigation. It is
> insufficient OA content provision (15%). Hence what is needed, urgently,
> is university *self-archiving policy*, not infrastructural or navigational
> enhancements:
[SNIP]

> Here David Stern is alas simply rehearsing well-worn (and long-answered)
> worries that have merely been serving to hold back OA for years now, not
> to advance it:
>
>     http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#1.Preservation
>     http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#4.Navigation
>     http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#7.Peer
>
> Stevan Harnad