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