Newly Enhanced Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

             ** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

Southampton's worldwide Registry of Institutional Open Access Archives
    
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse

created and maintained by Tim Brody and now in existence for about two
years has just been enhanced (and will soon be enhanced further) by Tim.

The Registry covers the 434 OAI-compliant OA Archives worldwide whose
existence has thus far been made known. As it is intended to cover OA
content (i.e., full-texts of either (1) preprints or (2) postprints of
peer-reviewed journal articles, or (3) dissertations), Archives that do
not provide *any* full-text content at all (only metadata), or that
provide only content of other kinds (internal documents, courseware,
library records, audio, video, software) are not covered -- though
archives of *mixed* content (both OA and non-OA) are covered. The Registry
also covers only archives that are OAI-compliant, hence interoperable,
harvestable using the OAI harvesting protocol.

[The Registry's intentional non-coverage of non-OA Archives is the reason
why it covers only 434 Archives with about 3.5 million records (estimated
from the fact that its 2.5 million records come from the 312/434 Archives
that celestial can currently harvest) rather than the full 487 Archives
and 5.5 million records covered by OAIster
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ ]

Southampton's Institutional OA Archives Registry not only tracks the
growth in the number of OA Archives worldwide across time, but it also
tracks the growth in their contents (i.e., the number of records in each
archive, across time), showing growth charts for each Archive, as well as
across Archives.

The size and growth data are also classified by the type of Archive:

    (i) Distributed Institutional/Departmental Pre-/Postprint Archives (212), 
    (ii) Central Cross-Research Archives (55)
    (iii) Dissertation Archives (e-theses) (54)

as well as

    (iv) database Archives (e.g. research data) (8)
    (v) e-journal/e-publishing Archives (39)
    (vi) demonstration Archives (not yet operational) (24)
    (vii) "other" Archives (non-OA content of various kinds) (42)

Where the content is mixed, and there is *some* OA content, the Archive is
classified as (i) - (vi).

The Archives are also classified by country and by the kind of software
used to create them.

There are also data on the total number of records in each individual
Archive, the total number of records across all Archives (and Archives in
each category) and the average number of records per Archive and Archive
category.

The record numbers are somewhat deceptive, however, because, as noted, not
all records correspond to OA objects (pre/postprints and theses), and not
all OA records are full-text. In fact, the majority of records are almost
certainly *not* OA full-texts. Estimates of the proportions will, we hope,
soon be available, as Tim works on an algorithm for identifying generating
separate counts for OA full-texts.

In addition, for 122/434 Archives their records cannot yet be counted and
monitored at all because they are not yet harvestable by
http://celestial.eprints.org. (Archive managers are strongly urged to
consult the Registry and if their records are not being harvested by
celestial, to contact Tim to remedy this: sometimes the problem is that
they have not provided the right OAI Base URL, or any at all).

The Registry also makes it possible to make some very interesting
projections, predictions and comparisons, but as you make them, please
bear in mind that they are still tempered by one major source of
uncertainty: If two Archives or Archive categories differ in their
proportion of OA full-texts, you may be comparing apples and oranges when
you compare the size and growth curve of their contents!

Needless to say, any OA Archives that are not yet in the Registry are
urged to register at http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=add
and to ensure that they are harvestable by celestial.

Currently, 15% of the annual 2.5 million articles published in the world's
24,000 journals have been made OA by being self-archived by their authors.
The Archives also contain dissertations, non-OA material, and
non-full-texts (metadata only), but their overall percentage of full-text
OA is probably higher than 15%, and for some individual Archives and kinds
of Archives, a good deal higher than 15%.

Note also that the two fullest and fastest-growing institutional archives
of all in terms of annual full-text OA content:

    I: the CERN Archive
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcdsweb.cern.ch%2F

    and 

    II: the Southampton ECS Archive
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk%2F

happen to be the only two Archives at institutions that have adopted and
implemented a mandatory self-archiving policy for all of their own annual
journal article output. Both are now self-archiving over 90% of their
research output.

The implication is obvious: Other institutions should adopt mandatory
self-archiving policies too:

    http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php

The demonstrated success of the CERN and Southampton policies -- together
with the results of the latest survey of authors across disciplines and
worldwide, which found that 81% of authors respond that they will
self-archive *willingly* if required (but not if not); 14% say they will
comply reluctantly and only 5% say they will not comply

        Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2005) Open access self-archiving:
        An author study. Technical Report, Joint Information
        Systems Committee (JISC), UK FE and HE funding councils.
        http://cogprints.org/4385/

and both CERN and Southampton have services to do the few keystrokes for
those authors who feel they haven't the time:

        Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2005) Keystroke Economy:
        A Study of the Time and Effort Involved in
        Self-Archiving. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/

        "Let Us Archive It For You!"
        http://eprints.st-andrews.ac.uk/proxy_archive.html
        http://software.eprints.org/handbook/libraries.php

So (a) have a look at the new, enhanced Institutional OA Archives
Registry, (b) register your own Institutional Archive if it's not in
there, (c) create one (or persuade your institution to create one) if you
don't have one yet -- it's cheap and easy

       Sponsler. E. & Van de Velde E. (2001) Eprints.org
       Software: A Review.  SPARC E-News, October 2
       2001. http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=search&query=caltech&submit=Search

especially relative to the dramatically increased research impact (and
research impact income) that OA has been demonstrated to provide

       http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/
       http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm
       http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

and urge your institution to adopt a self-archiving policy if it hasn't
one, preferably one that requires self-archiving rather than merely
encouraging it. What needs to grow is not just the number of institutions
with OA Archives (212) but the number with institutional OA self-archiving
policies:

    http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php

Stevan Harnad

P.S. I'm not really proposing to call the Registry "ROAR"! The term was
chosen advisedly, however, to register clearly the fact that the Registry
exists, has existed for some time, and is conveying a steadily growing
amount of innovative and important information. It needs to be built upon,
not bypassed. (Cf.
http://www.researchinformation.info/rimayjun05open_access.html )