Re: The Beginning of Institutional Repositories

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:13:11 -0400

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Sally Morris
<sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>
> NIH compliance - 49% of eligible papers deposited by end 08 (Richard
> Poynder)

Unless you imagine that the accelerating growth curve suddenly went
flat in Jan 2009 based on that curve I'd say deposit rates must be at
or above 60% by now, which is well within the 2-year margin Arthur
Sale estimated for mandate growth. (The NIH upgrade to a mandate took
effect in early 2008.)
http://www.nihms.nih.gov/stats/index.shtml

>
> Wellcome compliance - 35% of eligible papers deposited by end Apr 09 (Robert
> Kiley)

Wellcome had not initially put into place any mechanism for monitoring
compliance, and came to realize it needed to (and perhaps by now it
has already done so): http://bit.ly/dtkyq

Another mistake some funder mandates have made is to mandate direct
central deposit (e.g. in PubMed Central) instead of direct local
institutional deposit (and central export or harvesting if desired).
Not only do funders requiring central deposit compete with
institutions (the universal providers of all research output, funded
or unfunded) requiring institutional deposit (thereby discouraging
instead of encouraging complementary institutional mandates), but they
miss the all-important opportunity to have institutions monitor funder
mandate compliance as a condition of grant-fulfillment.
http://bit.ly/qiZLv

A further mistake some funders have made is to allow mandates to be
fulfilled EITHER by authors depositing OR by publishers depositing.
That wobbly kind of mandate is not only more complicated to fulfill,
but it is also more complicated to monitor and enforce, since
publishers, unlike the grantee, are unbeholden to the funder.

In contrast, institutional mandates (which are the ones that are
becoming increasingly important now that the "slumbering giant" -- the
universal provider -- is awakening) do not have this problem; indeed,
they are the solution. http://bit.ly/BHxq6

>
> That still leaves quite a gap, and neither you nor I know whether it will
> close over time.  Whether or not one supports self-archiving, the question
> remains of why not everyone complies, and what might be done about it.

The gap is not in mandate compliance but in mandate adoption. I
haven't the slightest worry that adopted mandates will generate high
compliance levels. My concern is about accelerating adoptions. That's
why I am busy dispelling groundless doubts sown about mandate
compliance (by way of discouraging adoption).

Stevan Harnad

> Sally Morris
>
> South House, The Street
>
> Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
>
> Tel: +44(0)1903 871286
>
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>
> Email: sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:amsciforum_at_gmail.com]
> Sent: 24 June 2009 12:43
> To: sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
> Subject: Re: The Beginning of Institutional Repositories
>
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Sally Morris (Morris Associates)
> <sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > That's what they told Alma.  It is not, however, what they are doing so
> far
>
> Before you become too settled in this wistful, wishful thinking,
> Sally, it might be prudent to have a look at some of the actual
> mandate compliance outcome data available so far:
>
> For funder mandates:
> http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2009/03/17/nih-mandate-made-perman
> ent/
>
> For institutional mandates:
> http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/comp/project.asp?lProjectId=1830
> and our own:
> http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/yassine/SelfArchiving/LogisticRegression.htm
>
> And, Sally, with the growth of mandates I am afraid it is only going
> to keep getting worse (or better, depending on one's point of view).
>
> I can quite understand why the publishing community may not realize,
> or may hope that researchers will not realize, what is in the best
> interests of research and researchers, when that happens to be in
> conflict with the interests of publishers.
>
> But researchers, sleepy as they have been, do wake up once it is
> mandated, and then the news (and palpable benefit) spreads, and things
> only get better (or worse, depending on your point of view).
>
> Stevan Harnad
Received on Wed Jun 24 2009 - 15:13:50 BST

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