[BOAI] On: "Using institutional repositories to raise compliance"

[Stevan Harnad]

To Bill Hubbard, SHERPA:

Dear Bill,

Your Oct 9 blog posting -- "Using institutional repositories to raise  
compliance" -- is a very welcome one:

"funders [should] agree a joint deposit-requirement and suggest this  
to be adopted by institutional repositories, in exchange for mandates  
requiring deposit within institutional repositories"

http://researchcommunications.jiscinvolve.org/2009/10/09/using-institutional-repositories-to-raise-compliance/

This problem has already been discussed explicitly for years, and this  
very solution has already been made suggested many times, but so far  
ignored. Let's hope its time has now at last come!

(I've posted the commentary below to your blog, but your blog's spam  
filter may block it because it tries to detect spam by the number of  
URLs. If so, could you post it for me?)

Chrs, Stevan

DEPOSIT INSTITUTIONALLY, HARVEST CENTRALLY

Apart from the tiny number (about 60) that have already mandated  
deposit, institutions are the "slumbering giant" of OA, until they  
wake up and mandate the deposit of their own research output in their  
own IRs. Not all research output is funded, but all research output is  
institutional: Hence institutions are the universal providers of all  
OA's target content. Although not many funders mandate deposit either,  
the few that already do (about 40) can help wake the slumbering giant,  
because one funder mandate impinges on the research output of fundees  
at many different institutions. But there is a fundamental underlying  
asymmetry governing where funders should mandate deposit: As Prof.  
Bernard Rentier (founder of EOS [EnablingOpenScholarship] and Rector  
of U. Liège, one of the first universities to adopt an institutional  
deposit mandate) has recently stressed, convergent funder mandates  
that require deposit in the fundee's own IR will facilitate the  
adoption of deposit mandates by institutions (the slumbering giant),  
whereas divergent funder mandates that require CR deposit (or are  
indifferent between CR and IR deposit) will only capture the research  
they fund, while needlessly handicapping (or missing the opportunity  
to facilitate) efforts to get institutional deposit mandates adopted  
and complied with too. The optimal solution for both institutions and  
funders is therefore: "Deposit institutionally, harvest  
centrally" (with the help of the SWORD protocol for automatic export  
from institutional to central repositories).

Central vs. Distributed Archives (thread began Jun 1999)
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0290.html

Central versus institutional self-archiving (thread began Nov 2003)
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3168.html

Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?  
(Sept 2006)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates (Mar 2008)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html

Batch Deposits in Institutional Repositories (the SWORD protocol) (Jul  
2008)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/431-guid.html

Waking OA's Slumbering Giant: Why Locus-of-Deposit Matters for Open  
Access and Open Access Mandates (Feb 2009)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/522-guid.html

Repositories: Institutional or Central? (Feb 2009)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/519-guid.html

EOS (EnablingOpenScholarship)
http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/j_6/home

Some of the prior postings on this topic:
http://bit.ly/cBnRh
http://bit.ly/2PXqU9

Stevan Harnad