Sally
I'd like to repeat Stevan's message from Australia and as an active
researcher myself: open access (OA) is about maximizing research impact, and
providing access to publications for all relevant researchers, while
preserving the value-adding aspects of refereeing and quality-certification.
This is a view that should have a very high appeal for all librarians, for
it lies at the core of what librarianship is all about: making access to
knowledge easy. However as Stevan says the bottle-neck in this process at
the moment is the researchers, and librarians can best help by encouraging
their researchers to make their research output accessible in an OA
repository, in their own personal interests.
Some forward-looking professional society publishers have partly recognized
this as well. For example, the Australian Computer Society Incorporated
grants a blanket OK to OA archiving
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php, and
also places all articles in the Journal of Research & Practice in
Information Technology on the ACS website at
https://www.acs.org.au/jrpit/JRPIT_Volumes.html and also all papers
presented at the multi-conference Australasian Computer Science Week at
http://crpit.com/. This is all long-standing practice of many years.
Unfortunately the ACS website is not yet OAI-PMH compatible, but it is
harvested by the search engines.
I have active support and understanding of this view from my local Library
and librarians. They understand that OA is not about saving Library
subscription funds (indeed there remains pressure to increase them) but
about positioning the University of Tasmania's research in the global arena
and making it widely accessible.
Arthur
Arthur Sale
Professor of Computing (Research)
127 Tranmere Road, Howrah, Tasmania 7018, AUSTRALIA
Phone (03) 6247 1331 (International replace '(03)' by '+61-3-') or Mobile 04
1947 1331
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-
> ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: Saturday, 9 July 2005 01:04
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: [AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM] A Prophylactic Against
> the Edentation of the RCUK Policy Proposal
>
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Sally Morris (ALPSP) wrote:
>
> > Stevan, I don't know what planet you live on (;-) but on Planet Earth
the
> > problem librarians are trying to address - and the reason for any
> > enthusiasm for repositories or any other means of OA - is a shortage of
funds
>
> Sally, that might be the reason for librarians' (and library funders')
enthusiasm
> for OA, but it is not the main reason for OA. The reason for OA is to
maximise
> research impact, hence research progress and productivity. And the
*providers*
> of OA are not and cannot be librarians (be they ever so enthusiastic): The
> only providers of OA are the researchers themselves. And the only reason
that
> will persuade them (and their funders) to provide it is that it manximises
their
> research impact.
>
> So whereas both the publishing community and the library community
> are marginally implicated in OA (each can either help or hinder it)
> OA-provision itself is 100% in the hands of the OA-providers: the research
> community. It can and will be done only by and for them.
>
> It is to the research community that the RCUK mandate is addressed.
>
> Stevan
Received on Sat Jul 09 2005 - 07:54:16 BST