[GOAL] Re: US Presidential Open Access Directive: 3 Cheers and 8 Suggestions

[Andrew A. Adams]

Arthur Sale wrote:
> Hey, let's be realistic.  For most purposes text plus pictures is adequate.
> Add videos if you must. Your average repository can cope with all that,
> integrated into a pdf. We've probably got 95% coverage. One cannot easily
> search pictures or video, but must rely on metadata and surrounding clues.
> Most repositories can accept any file format but they are disconnected from
> the object of choice, and are not displayed or searchable.
> 
> In some fields, like protein geometry, DNA sequences, crystallography,
> architecture and even computer science that is inadequate. In these cases a
> repository that has the ability to display and search formats that no-one
> else can is invaluable to the researchers, especially if they can index them
> by structure. So what we are talking about are objects that are NOT
> reducible to readable paper. Focus on that. If you want to search
> crystallographic structure, Google is not only hopeless but useless. As long
> as they exist, subject repositories have a place (a large place). I am not
> writing that institutional repositories are not good, but they are not the
> answer to the world's problems yet. Keep using them, but recognise that
> there is a significant scope for specialized repositories.

My focus is on the papers. The text and images published in the peer reviewed 
journal literature. For that, but the whole of that (all subjects, all 
papers), I contend that institutional repositories, with deposit of the paper 
mandated by the institution and funders, is the quickest and simplest route 
to universal gratis OA. If we receive that before I  clock out I can assure 
you that I will be involved in the push for expanding that openness, but I 
have yet to see a mechanism that scales to all fields better than 
institutional and funder mandates for IR-deposit (plus whatever data deposit 
individual discplines mandate, with simple cross-deposit of papers where 
feasible).

For specific fields there are areas of highly structured data that could and 
should be put into disciplinary archives, and linked across to papers that 
use/refer to that data. These archives are best centrally-run by a non-profit 
scholarly body. Papers that reference data in that can easily be deposited 
locally and then the central data repository can either have the paper pushed 
to it or pull the meta-data and link back to the IR for the full-text (with 
access button request if needed by publisher embargoes).

I do not disagree on this. However, the push for central discipline-specific 
repositories being the mandated locus of deposit for papers does not scale to 
all disciplines because not all disciplines have a need of a data repository, 
not all disciplines have a cohesive enough body to run one and many 
disciplines have very fuzzy edges.

-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/