Re: NIH mandate - institutional repositories

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

On 21-Nov-07, at 7:53 PM, Anthony Watkinson wrote:

> I cannot claim to be an expert on institutional repositories 
> and their history but the first time I became aware of them was 
> from a presentation by Ann Wolpert one the originators of 
> DSpace. It was my understanding then and it is my understanding 
> now that for some involved in the IR movement the purpose was 
> to provide a service to faculty. The DSpace mission from one of 
> the sites reads:
>
> DSpaceT is a free, open source software platform that allows 
> research organizations to offer faculty and researchers a 
> professionally managed searchable archive for their digital 
> assets. DSpace focuses on simple access to these assets, as 
> well as their long-term preservation.
>
> It is my understanding that DSpace development was in progress 
> by 2000.

At the end of 2000. IRs began in 1999-2000, with EPrints, at 
Southampton, where CogPrints (designed by Matt Hemus, a 
Southampton ECS doctoral student) was first made OAI-compliant 
and then turned into EPrints generic IR software by Rob Tansley 
(likewise a Southampton ECS doctoral student) in 2000:

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD

EPrints was widely adopted and Rob Tansley was then recruited by 
MIT and Hewlett-Packard to create DSpace.

http://www.apsr.edu.au/Open_Repositories_2006/speakers.htm

EPrints and DSpace are now the two most widely used IR softwares 
worldwide.

http://roar.eprints.org/index.php?action=browse

> In 2002 a very different definition was proposed by Raym Crow 
> in his SPARC position paper - see 
> http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/ir_final_release_102.pdf. The 
> definition of IRs set out in his abstract is very different and 
> speaks of reforming scholarly communication in line with the 
> SPARC agenda.

IRs were originally on the right track: OA self-archiving. The 
SPARC position paper scrambled that a little with some rather 
quackish ideas about publishing reform.

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/crow.html

> My picture is that SPARC have attempted to hi-jack an agenda 
> which was faculty-centred into one which is library-centred, 
> some libraries that is. The mandates proposed are only 
> necessary because faculty persistently refuse to fit in with 
> this new agenda which does not represent their needs or wishes.

This is a misimpression. The mandates have nothing to do with 
SPARC or a hi-jacked agenda.

http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

They have to do with the fact that busy faculty will not do 
anything -- even something that is in their own interests -- 
unless it is required. But if self-archiving is required, Alma 
Swan's surveys have shown that over 95% of faculty report they 
will comply, over 80% of them saying they will comply willingly.

http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/

And Arthur Sale's studies on actual behavior confirm this: 
Faculty do not self-archive in great numbers spontaneously, or if 
merely invited, requested or encouraged to do it, whereas they 
self-archive at substantially higher rates if it is mandated -- 
approaching full compliance within about 2 years.

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_10/sale/index.html

This is not surprising, as faculty also comply with publish-or-perish
mandates -- and would publish a good deal less without them

http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw64/harnad.html

Stevan Harnad