Re: [SOAF] Another Winning Article From OA's Chronicler and Conscience: Richard Poynder

From: Heather Morrison <heatherm_at_ELN.BC.CA>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:21:53 -0700

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Sally - can you post the article, please? I would like to review and
possibly comment on the methodology, but first I need to see the paper.
You refer to chaotic proliferation of versions as being an issue for
authors, yet your own behavior suggests a high comfort level with just such
a chaotic proliferation of versions. From my perspective, an unrefereed
preprint would be a vast improvement to these self-selected snippets of this
so-far unpublished study you have posted to this list over the past few
months.

As Stevan frequently points out, there are a great many things that faculty
have to do at universities, because there are rules saying that they must.
For example, to be considered for tenure & promotion, it is necessary to go
through an application and review process. This is quite a bit more work
than self-archiving! If it were possible to obtain tenure & promotion
without the bother of the paperwork, WOULD faculty bother?

Sally does have a good point about faculty just not understanding, in my
opinion. I don't think any of us, not even the most ardent of
archivangelists, have yet fully appreciated the full potential of the IR.

For example, in some cases an IR mandate will immediately DECREASE a faculty
member's workload by much more than is created by the few keystrokes it
takes to self-archive. How so? Currently, faculty members do need to
report on their publications and other activities; multiple reporting is
common. There may be one report for the department, another for the tenure
and promotion committee, still others for research funding agencies, plus
the faculty member's own website, of course. When the IR mandates says that
all publications must be self-archived in the IR because this is where the
university will look for their work (tenure and promotion committee,
departmental reports), this means that those few self-archiving keystrokes
can save hours of administrative work down the line for faculty.

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and does
not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library Network or
Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com


On 13-Mar-09, at 2:33 AM, Sally Morris wrote:

Author apathy (or actual unease) about self-archiving is certainly what Sue
Thorn and I found in our recent study (to be published in Learned Publishing
in July). Extract from abstract follows:


?? less than half knew what self-archiving was; 36% thought it was a good
idea and 50% were unsure. Just under half said they used repositories of
self-archived articles, but 13% of references were not in fact to
self-archiving repositories. 29% said they self-archived their own
articles, but 10% of references were not to publicly accessible sites of any
kind. The access and convenience of self-archiving repositories were seen
as positive, but there were concerns about quality control, workload for
authors and institutions, chaotic proliferation of versions, and potential
damage to existing journals, publishers and societies.?

I don?t believe that saying you would do something if you were obliged to do
so is the same as actually wanting it (or even necessarily understanding it)

Sally


Sally Morris

South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Received on Fri Mar 13 2009 - 22:10:05 GMT

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