The cost of setting up an archive in most developing
country institutions is much less than what librarians
from advanced countries are quoting. Please talk to Mr
Francis Jayakanth of the National Centre for Science
Information at the Indian Institute of Science, who is
running one of the best institutional open access
archives in this part of the world. Or talk to his
Chairman, Prof. N Balakrishnan, Associate Director of
IISc, who is heading the Indian part of the Million
Books digitization project as well.
What developing country scientists need today is an
archive of research papers that are published (or
going to be published) in refereed professional
journals. Not a comprehensive repository which would
include annual report of the institution, admission
records, proceedings of the senate and syndicate
meetings, etc. We need access to hard research
information which we are unable to get now because we
do not have the money to subscribe to all the journals
relevant to the research we do.
Again, OA journals produced in India are produced at a
much lower cost than PLos and BMC and other advanced
country author-pay OA journals. And NOT one of them
charges author fees. Please talk to Mr G Madhavan,
Secretary of Indian Academy of Sciences, and Dr D K
Sahu of MedKnow Publications.
I am fed up hearing reasons for not adopting OA citing
wrong numbers (on costs).
Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]
--- Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005, Pippa Smart wrote:
>
> > The requirements of Yale have - probably
> inevitably - led to the large cost
> > of implementation as stated by Ann Okerson, and
> for them there were
> > probably no turnkey solutions - I am sure they
> would have considered ePrints.
> >
> > Another interesting cost comparison of launching
> and operating these
> > repositories has been collated by Rebecca Kemp
> from University of North
> > Carolina. It gives costs from 10 libraries from
> the USA, UK, Canada and
> > Ireland, and shows a range from $6k to $1million
> for setup.
> >
>
<
http://library.uncwil.edu/Faculty/kempr/listserv-summary-IR-open-source-costs.xls>
http://library.uncwil.edu/Faculty/kempr/listserv-summary-IR-open-source-costs.xls
>
> We in part create today's realities. And among those
> realities is the fact
> that universities are continuing -- daily, weekly,
> monthly, cumulatively
> -- to lose 25%-250%+ percent of their potential
> research impact, simply
> because they are not yet self-archiving their
> research output. Alongside
> pursuing the less urgent and more diffuse,
> open-ended and pricey
> agenda of long-term digital curation, would it not
> make sense to *also*
> adopt, in parallel, a low-end "turnkey" solution
> aimed specifically at
> stanching the needless chronic loss of research
> impact? Paradoxically,
> the negligible ($6K) investment and focussed target
> can net a lot more
> concrete, immediate and short- and long-term
> benefit, including research
> progress and revenue, than just aimlessly
> immortalizing bits willy-nilly.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
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Received on Sun Dec 11 2005 - 17:56:53 GMT