Institutional vs. Central Repositories Stevan Harnad 25 Nov 2009 17:29 UTC
On Wed, 25 Nov 2009, Armbruster, Chris wrote: > Much hope and a lot of money has been invested in institutional > repositories - but, for example, in the UK the significant mandates are > now research funder mandates and all the life science RCUKs have joined > UK PMC. It would thus seem important and urgent that IRs reconsider > their strategy and take a closer look at the idea of being a research > repository or joining forces for building a national (or regional) system. (-2) It is not at all clear that the "significant mandates" are the funder mandates, especially in view of the past year's burst in institutional mandates (UCL, Harvard, MIT, Stanford...): http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/alma-mand1.png (-1) The ones who need to reconsider their strategy are the (few) research funders who have needlessly and counterproductively stipulated that locus of deposit should be central rather than institutional. http://bit.ly/6tmeUl (1) Institutions are the universal providers of all research output -- funded and unfunded, across all subjects, all institutions, and all nations. (2) Institutions have a vested interest in hosting, monitoring, showcasing and archiving their own research output. (3) OAI-compliant Repositories are all interoperable. (4) Either funders or institutions can in principle stipulate any locus of deposit for a mandate, either institutional or central. (5) But mandates are still growing too slowly, and one big reason is that *no one wants to do -- or mandate -- multiple deposit*. (6) There are potentially multiple, diverse and divergent central loci for any piece of research output: subject collections, national collections, funder collections, multidisciplinary collections, etc. (7) The metadata and/or full-text deposits of any OAI-compliant repository can be harvested, exported or imported to any OAI-compliant repository. (8) The natural, economical, rational and systematic solution (one-to-many, unitary-local --> multiple-distal) is for all researchers to deposit *locally*, in their own institional repository -- and for distal central collections to harvest, import or export -- not the reverse (many-to-one, distal to local, willy-nilly, back-harvesting one's own output from here, there and everywhere!), or both, or neither. (9) The only thing that stands in the way of that optimal solution -- whereby institutional and funder mandates can collaborate, converge, and mutually reinforce one another instead of diverging and competing -- is the arbitrary and ill-thought-through requirement by some funders (but by no means all) to deposit centrally instead of institutionally. (10) This obstacle is neither a functional one (it has nothing *whatsoever* to do with the relative functionality of institutional and central repositories -- they are interoperable and equipotent in every respect) nor a "cultural" one (since self-archiving culture is still very new and all too rare): the problem is simply the needless adoption of arbitrary and ill-thought-out locus-of-deposit requirements by some of the initial funders. (11) The solution is to fix the funder locus-of-deposit specs, not to switch to central locus of deposit. (12) Prediction: The notion of a "central repository" -- new as it is -- is already obsolescent: Is Google a "central repository" or merely a harvester of local content? Stevan Harnad > Armbruster, Chris and Romary, Laurent, Comparing Repository Types: Challenges > and Barriers for Subject-Based Repositories, Research Repositories, National > Repository Systems and Institutional Repositories in Serving Scholarly > Communication (November 23, 2009). Available at SSRN: > http://ssrn.com/abstract=1506905 > > Regards, Chris > > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: American Scientist Open Access Forum im Auftrag von Leslie Carr > Gesendet: Di 11/24/2009 18:11 > An: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG > Betreff: Re: Comparing repositories - subject-based, institutional, > research and national repository systems > > On 23 Nov 2009, at 17:22, Armbruster, Chris wrote: >> After two decades of repository development, some conclusions may be drawn >> as to which type of repository and what kind of service best supports >> digital scholarly communication, and thus the production of new knowledge. >> > I think "two decades" is a bit misleading: although what we think of as the > big subject-based repositories may predate the Web itself it's only just 10 > years since the conception of OAI-PMH and (just) less than 8 years since the > Budapest Open Access Initiative. Even the notion of an Institutional > Repository is still relatively young - and when did we start calling them > "repositories" rather than "archives"? I'm sure that the archives of this > list will have the answer! > -- > Les Carr >