Berkeley Press's Advice to Universities on Institutional Repositories

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

                  ** Cross-Posted **

      Bankier, J-G & Perciali, I. (20088) The Institutional Repository
      Rediscovered: What Can a University Do for Open Access Publishing
      Serials Review (in press)

      ABSTRACT: Universities have always been one of the key players in open
      access publishing and have encountered the particular obstacle that
      faces this Green model of open access, namely, disappointing author
      uptake. Today, the university has a unique opportunity to reinvent
      and to reinvigorate the model of the institutional repository. This
      article explores what is not working about the way we talk about
      repositories to authors today and how can we better meet faculty
      needs. More than an archive, a repository can be a showcase that
      allows scholars to build attractive scholarly profiles, and a platform
      to publish original content in emerging open-access journals.

      Bankier is President, The Berkeley Electronic Press, Berkeley,
      CA 94705, USA

      Perciali is Director of Journals, The Berkeley Electronic Press,
      Berkeley, CA 94705, USA

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W63-4RS9SPC-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b0ddbf6152e06d538e61bed953d2e817

This article is rather out of date. The authors, B&P, note 
(correctly) that Institutional Repositories (IRs) did not fill 
spontaneously upon creation. But their article does not mention 
or take into account the growing tide of funder and university 
Green OA self-archiving mandates. 
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php

This oversight is perhaps partly because some of the most recent 
mandates (European Research Council, NIH, and the unanimous 
recommendation for a Green OA self-archiving mandate by the 
Council of the European University Association, with 791 
universities in 46 countries) came after B&P's article -- which 
is very thin on citation or discussion of actual mandate progress 
or rationale -- went to press.

So, instead of supporting the current mandates for universities 
to fill their IRs with their own published research journal 
articles, B&P argue that universities should become Gold OA 
publishers of their own research output.

It is not clear whether each university, according to the B&P, 
should become the in-house publisher of its own output (in which 
case one wonders about peer review and neutrality) or university 
presses should simply try to take over more of the existing 
journals from commercial and society publishers. Either way, 
Berkeley Press is here again recommending spontaneous Gold OA 
publishing reform (which, in terms of number of articles for 
which it has provided OA has been even slower than spontaneous 
Green OA self-archiving by authors).

Recommendations have proved resoundingly ineffective (over what 
will soon be a decade) in accelerating the transition to 100% OA, 
whether the recommendation has been to publishers to convert to 
Gold OA or to authors to provide Green OA to what they have 
published.

Mandates, in contrast, have consistently proved highly effective, 
in every instance where they were adopted, and mandates are now 
growing rapidly. Researchers comply, and comply willingly. It is 
apparent that mandates play the role of welcome facilitation, not 
unwelcome coercion, serving to allay author fears about copyright 
and author uncertainty about priorities.

But Gold OA cannot be mandated: Only Green OA can be.

So advocates of Gold OA are advised to be patient, and to allow 
Green OA mandates to have their beneficial effect, generating 
100% OA. Then we can talk about whether, when and how to convert 
journals to Gold OA. Not before.

As to advice to universities on how to make better use of their 
IRs in managing and showcasing their research assets: for a much 
more current and realistic article, see:

      Swan, A. and Carr, L. (2008) Institutions, their repositories
      and the Web. Serials Review, 34 (1). ISSN 0098-7913 (In Press)
      http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14965/1/Serials_Review_article.doc

      ABSTRACT: It will soon be rare for research-based institutions not
      to have a digital repository. The main reason for a repository is
      to maximise the visibility of the institution's research outputs
      (provide Open Access), yet few contain a representative proportion
      of the research produced by their institutions. Repositories form
      one part of the institution's  web platform. An explicit, mandatory
      policy on the use of the repository for collecting outputs is
      needed in every institution so that the full research record is
      collected. Once full, a repository is a tool that enables senior
      management in research institutions to collate and assess research,
      to market their institution, to facilitate new forms of scholarship
      and to enable the tools that will produce new knowledge.

Stevan Harnad