RE: NIH mandate - institutional repositories

["Sally Morris \(Morris Associates\)" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>]

The irony is that so few academics are convinced that self- 
archiving is good for them (like cod liver oil?) and that it 
takes mandates to get them to do it

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Aaron Edlin
Sent: 29 November 2007 00:51
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: NIH mandate - institutional repositories

My own thinking, and the philosophy of bepress, is that the 
university is filled with many interests and constituencies. The 
puzzle is getting them to work well together. Faculty seek to 
promote themselves individually, and seek control and identity; 
universities seek to promote themselves and grow; librarians seek 
to create useful order from chaos. These goals can, but need not, 
conflict.

As to mandates, I favor them.  As I see it, the university or
government funds much of my research.  Why should they not demand
and insist on a non-exclusive copy of my writings to preserve for
posterity (for what posterity cares about my work) or to
advertise to the world, should I be lucky enough that UC Berkeley
could bask in the glory of my writing?

All that said, for various political and practical reasons, 
including lobbying by Elsevier, I don't see *effective* mandates 
coming for a little while yet.

In the meantime, the key for those who are pro-repository is to 
find a way to work with faculty.  How do you make faculty 
volunteer or indeed be eager? Convince them that their career 
will benefit and give them control and something to identify 
with.  Faculty want their own place...one they control... on the 
internet.  Many build sites themselves with cumbersome and kludgy 
tools.  These sites are highly idiosyncratic data structures. 
Better that they should be easy to use, beautiful, and easily 
harvestable (or automatically incorporated) into the 
institution's IR (or Research Showcase, as I like to call it).

For this, bepress developed SelectedWorks
(http://works.bepress.com). D-space has developed personal
research pages.  These, I predict, will be key to filling
repositories until effective mandates arrive.

___

P.S. Please have a look at http://works.bepress.com/aaron_edlin/ 
and sign up for notifications of my new work!