Re: Open Access: The Next Step

From: Leslie Carr <lac_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:40:22 +0530

On 21 Feb 2007, at 11:17, Andrew A. Adams wrote:

> So, the question I believe we should begin to consider is how we
> will provide
> "Open Access to the Past".

I'd like to offer a practical perspective from my experience of
starting open access repositories.

Be very careful about the past, there's a lot of it and there's only
a limited amount of effort that you can draw on now, in the present.

If you are setting up a self-archiving repository for "current
science", consider the load that your repository will impose on each
scholar/scientist/researcher once it is established and running
normally: each researcher will have to deposit an item every few
months (say 10 minutes every 3 months). This is not onerous, and is
relatively easy to sell to your researchers. Now consider adding the
startup requirement that you also want to include the last 4 year's
literature. Suddenly you have to sell to your staff the idea that
they each have to invest several hours to start the repository. Their
load over the first six months of the repository goes from a notional
20 minutes work to a notional 3 hours (9 times as much!)

The result? Disgruntled staff who are more likely to feel hostile and
ill-disposed towards the repository, who have less patience with the
software and are more likely to complain to the repository manager
(me!) While our staff got over the "legacy mountain" after a painful
few months, I did wish that we hadn't added that extra complication
at the start. I would prefer to get the repository established, make
sure people are happy AND THEN encourage them to fill in papers from
the past.

Of course, you may have external requirements which force you to
start your repository with a number of years outputs, in which case
you just have to weather the storm. Our school had to provide a
research report to our University that covered a period from 2 years
previously, and we had a period of 2 months to achieve it. People did
come around to seeing the advantages of a well-stocked repository,
and voluntarily started to put their older material in.

So my suggestion is worry about the present because the past will
start to take care of itself.

I have nothing to suggest about creating a repository for "past
science", because I'm not sure who would undertake this in a scalable
fashion (ie as a normal part of their job without requiring extra
funding.)
---
Les
Received on Sun Feb 25 2007 - 14:02:58 GMT

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