Re: Pogo: We have seen the enemy, and he is us...

[brs4@lehigh.edu]

Is it so clear that some couple thousand colleges and universities in the
U.S.  are all going to mandate self-archiving *and* that most faculty will
actually self-archive even if "required" to do so, despite the best of
initial intentions as revealed in one or another survey? How are faculty
going to be policed who do not self-archive, or don't want to? Faculties
pride themselves on a degree autonomy from administrations. Is it so clear
too that the same measure of interest in self-archiving will be displayed
across disciplines?

Or is it so clear that all the authors at institutions are going to self-
archive voluntarily and consistently, if their universities do not enforce
or require it? Or that the U.S. government could, should or would make it
mandatory for universities or colleges to self-archive research that is
not government funded?

I do not dispute the desirability of self-archiving, but the solution will
emerge when universities gradually divert their serials funds to very
efficiently run journal operations that link to institutional
repositories, not in imagining what modal logicians call "possible worlds"
in which everyone acts reasonably.

That is a reason for developing repositories, not a faith in publisher
largesse with respect to conferring a "right" to self-archive postprints,
nor an assumption that the day will dawn when some very large number of
authors and institutions self-archive.

I have no illusions about the difficulties involved. But a gradualist
approach in which universities develop or take over some lead journals and
make this work may be worth a try.

These considerations in my mind reflect not prophesies of doom but an
assessment of the practical realities involved. It is, incidentally, those
realities that working librarians have to work with. We are left picking
up the pieces when models don't prove sustainable, as recent history
starkly confirms.

If we're going to create institutional repositories, it has to be for the
right reason.

Brian Simboli