Re: Self-archiving or third-party archiving? (RE: Authors and OA)

[Norbert Lossau <lossau@ub.uni-bielefeld.de>]

Self-archiving in the narrow sense as described by Rick sounds to me like
"private" archiving. But is there private archiving for "public"  
researchers? Self-archiving of a researcher at the university means in
fact archiving on a computer resource provided by the university (at least
in Germany). And the research has also been funded with public grants
(obviously there is private funding as well but let's keep this aside for
a moment).

Thus why not interpreting institutional archiving as "self-archiving"? The
concept behind self-archiving is to have full control over the content and
this is certainly the case with all types of author and
faculty/institutional archiving. How institutions implement this policy
should be left to them. In Bielefeld we will continuously further develop
the current institutional repository to a full eScholarship repository,
hosted by the university library. This will not only guarantee the full
control but also the use of standards (like OAI-PMH) and the library is
willing to support this process actively. At our university the library is
not regarded as third party (on the same level as a publisher) but as
member of the same institution and as trusted repository.

Norbert Lossau

Am 20 Jul 2004 um 8:36 hat Rick Anderson geschrieben:

> [MOD. OBSERVATION:  Stevan seems all along to have used "self-archiving"  
> in a broad sense, i.e., it's authors' posting to either own sites or
> eprint sites or repositories, i.e., sending to any e-source other than the
> journal in which the article is published.  Consistent even if a little
> confusing at times!]
> 
> Now I'm really confused, but it may be that I'm fundamentally
> misunderstanding something about the self-archiving concept.  Do you mean
> that authors should leave it to the universities to do the self-archiving
> for them?  It seems to me that it's either self-archiving (and therefore
> the author's responsibility) or it's third-party archiving (and therefore
> the responsibility of someone other than the author).
> 
> To say that authors need only do the research and write it up and then
> leave the self-archiving for someone else to do for them strikes me as a
> contradiction in terms.  If we're really talking about self-archiving,
> then "all they need to do is provide OA to it" is a statement that, I
> think, blithely covers up a world of cost and complexity.  Providing OA is
> not simply a matter of flicking a switch or granting permission.  It's a
> matter of publishing, and publishing in a particularly costly and robust
> manner (given that OA implies access that is both universal and permanent,
> neither of which characteristics has much precedent in the history of
> publishing).  To pretend that this would not constitute a significant
> burden for authors is, I think, unrealistic.  Unless, again, the burden is
> being placed on someone else, in which case I don't see why it's called
> self-archiving.
> 
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu