Re: Functioning IRs - today's real realities

From: Heather Morrison <heatherm_at_eln.bc.ca>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:37:41 -0800

I completely agree with Fytton - there are other important reason for
institutional repositories, besides peer-reviewed articles.

However, I would like to suggest another reason why working to get
peer-reviewed research articles into institutional repositories is an urgent
priority, at least in countries like Canada: that is, many of our faculty
will be retiring over the next few years. It will be much easier to work
with our faculty to ensure that their work is in our IR, if we begin before
rather than after they retire.

In other words, lovely though it might be to have IRs with all the details
worked through before they are implemented, the implications for permanent
loss of content through delay suggest that the more rapid the
implementation, the better. Content we gather now; can be moved to the
idyllic system in a few years. Content that is not gathered now, could be
lost forever to our institutions.

Heather Morrison

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 09:35:26 -0000
AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG wrote:
> I have to say that I disagree with Arthur Sale. I fully support the
> objective of getting all of an institution's peer-reviewed published
output
> on to its OA repository, but to call the other possible uses of an IR
> 'low-priority' is a one-eyed view of the purposes of a university. A
> university library may possess unique special collections of primary
> material that is available nowehere else in the world. Is making that
> material available to the world a low-priority issue? A university
> may wish
> to make teaching materials readily available to distance-learning
students;
> this may be low-priority to Arthur, but it isn't low-priority to
> students in
> the Australian outback, I would guess.
>
> Just because we have a particular cause, and our own priorities, does not
> mean that others within our institutions cannot have their own different
> priorities. The casue of achieving a fully functioning IR in every
> university can be best served by forming alliances with others within our
> institutions, not by belittling their own different priorities.
>
> Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arthur Sale" <ahjs_at_OZEMAIL.COM.AU>
> To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
> Sent: Monday, December 12, 2005 8:41 PM
> Subject: Re: Functioning IRs - today's real realities
>
>
> > True. A lot of people are using the term IR for sideshows such as
> > digitizations of historical collections and image collections, not to
> > mention learning objects and e-publishing, while only five
> universities in
> > the world have so far achieved near 100% content of peer reviewed freely
> > available articles.
> >
> > It is truly strange to observe such a lot of misguided people wasting
> > their
> > time and their institution's money on low-priority issues. When we have
> > achieved world coverage of peer-reviewed articles, then is the time to
> > spend
> > on some of these unclear (and much more expensive) issues.
> >
> > Arthur Sale
>


Heather G. Morrison
Received on Tue Dec 13 2005 - 17:10:40 GMT