Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Ah, yes, and if you'll remember our prior discussion about open 
access, Stevan, I warned that just this "success" might be the 
"tipping point" to drive a host of commercial and society 
publishers out of the business of journal publishing. One 
"tipping point" causes another? Witness, as partial proof, the 
reaction of STM publishers represented by the PRISM initiative. I 
read that as a warning that, if the government forces a change in 
their business model, they may just walk away from the business. 
I assume you wouldn't consider that a bad thing at all, but my 
question would be what kind of structure will take its place and 
what expectations will universities have of their presses to pick 
up the slack?

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press


>      Thomas, Chuck &  McDonald, Robert H. (2007)
>      Measuring and Comparing Participation Patterns in Digital
>      Repositories: Repositories by the Numbers, Part 1.
>      D-lib Magazine 13 (9/10)
>      http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september07/mcdonald/09mcdonald.html
>      doi:10.1045/september2007-mcdonald
>
>      EXCERPT: "As for mandatory-deposit repositories, the limited
>      available data indicate authors represented in such repositories
>      tend to contribute more of their intellectual output. Sale (2006)
>      predicted institutions establishing deposit mandates were likely
>      to see such results within three years of implementing these
>      policies... This study's findings only reinforce such predictions
>      and arguments favoring institutional mandates. As the data in this
>      article show, a mandate is arguably the "tipping point" described by
>      Gladwell (2000) that can make depositing behavior among scholars not
>      just widespread, but also more of an ingrained and complete behavior."