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Re: Estimates on data and cost per department for institutional archives? Stevan Harnad 08 Dec 2003 12:05 UTC

On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Min-Yen Kan wrote:

> At the National University of Singapore, a task force has assembled
> to examine the possibility of setting up an open-access institutional
> repository [for]
> >   5. (RES) self-archiving institutional research output (preprints,
> >    postprints and theses)
> >   http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3210.html
> >   http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2837.html
>
> we are currently trying to estimate the amount of data that will
> eventually flow into the institutional archive. It's hoped that it will
> give us a way to estimate the cost of the budget for the project.

I leave it to the administrators of the existing institutional
archives for RES (e.g., the larger ones among the 113
in http://software.eprints.org/archives.php or the 243 in
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ ) to reply about costs. I just
wish to point out one crucial omission in the question:

Cost is very low, and the cost per-paper will obviously be lower the more
papers are archived. But how many papers are archived in turn depends
on something completely different from the question of archive cost, namely,
whether or not the institution has a successful and effective policy
for ensuring that the RES archive is filled!
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0022.gif

There are many institutional archives intended for RES that are sitting
out there still near-empty for lack of an institutional archive-filling
policy. There is not much to be learned from finding out what that
costs to do! If I were planning to set up institutional archives for
RES I would devote far more effort to finding out how to fill them (and
then to filling them). If nothing else, that would give a far better
idea of the per-paper cost to expect. The cost-data from some of the
larger existing archives will help estimate this figure. Reckon into
it also the cost per-paper of implementing an effective institutional
archive-filling policy!
http://eprints.st-andrews.ac.uk/proxy_archive.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
    Post discussion to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org

Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
    BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
            journal whenever one exists.
    BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
            toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0021.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0028.gif