Re: Authors and OA (RE: Mandating OA around the corner)

[Brian Simboli <brs4@lehigh.edu>]

A question about below.

Couldn't there be a credentialling body for a specific subject that would
give the "seal of approval" for selected articles in institutional
archives? So an article in an institutional repository could be labelled
"this article has received the xyz seal of approval", where xyz is say a
society committee, or an editorial board along traditional lines. The
institutional repositories could be centralized for long-standing and
stable consortia, such that faculty at member institutions in that
consortium could submit articles to the centralized repository. It would
be up to the author to get the seal of approval from xyz. Once they do so,
they would submit the article, marked with that approval, to their
consortial archive, and that would be that in terms of author involvement.
A and I resources and webpages for the approving body (xyz)  could give
organized access to all the articles, spread across institutional
repositories across the land, that have that particular seal of approval.

Brian Simboli
Lehigh University

P.S. apologies if this merely recaps suggestions already broached. If it 
does (as I suspect), if anyone knows where the suggestion is 
entertained, please let me know. Am trying to come up to speed on such 
issues.

Rick Anderson wrote:

>>The real problem with Harnadian OA (author self-archiving, for example) is
>>that it doesn't work *for authors.* This is the key point.  It is authors
>>who have a huge stake in the status quo, as the journals they publish in
>>are the means of determining professional advancement. 
> 
>Joe raises an essential issue here.  For what it's worth, I'm working on a
>piece right now for Serials Review that discusses this point -- that it's
>one thing to come up with an OA model that pleases publishers, librarians
>and the general public, and quite another to come up with a model that
>will actually attract authors.  
>
>Self-archiving, for example, sounds like a great solution only until you
>consider all of its ramifications.  It's not just a matter of
>credentialling, though Joe is absolutely right that credentialling is of
>central concern to authors.  By asking authors not only to do original
>research and write their papers but also to put them in a functional
>(maybe even attractive, and definitely ADA-compliant) online format, to
>maintain them in a universally-accessible online space, to be responsible
>for the maintenance of the necessary hardware and to keep the software
>up-to-date, to administer durable links, to carry the articles with them
>as they move from institution to institution (or provide for a permanent
>home someplace else) -- all of this will create an economic opportunity
>for someone ("Anyone! please!," I hear the authors cry) who is willing to
>provide those services, thus freeing up the authors to do their real work.  
>They will do so at a price, of course.
>
>We might not call such service providers "publishers," but that's what
>they'll actually be.  Then the question will be who should pay them for
>those services.  And so it all begins again...
> 
>---
>Rick Anderson