Re: Berlin-3 Open Access Conference, Southampton, Feb 28 - Mar 1 2005

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Anthony Watkinson is of course correct that few scholars have expressed
much interest in institutional repositories.  I think this is a shame, but
there you are.  What I continue to find baffling is the belief (not held
by Mr. Watkinson, of course) that there is a pent-up demand for Open
Access and that only money-grubbing publishers are getting in the way.  
Many, perhaps most, publishers are attempting to accommodate OA in some
fashion; librarians appear to be supportive, also (though I continue to
find it hard to imagine a librarian's role in a world with extensive OA
and Google).  But authors?  By and large, they are not interested, with
important exceptions acknowledged.  Precisely why Professor Harnad
believes that mandated self-archiving represents a show of support is a
mystery to me.  To "green" and "gold" OA, we now have the
Eat-Your-Vegetables OA:  Do it because it is good for you.

Advocates of OA would be advised to focus less on new business models and
more on new businesses.  Such businesses would add value to authors, who
would engage these services not out of altruism but out of self-interest.  
Coming up with these new businesses will require imagination and daring.  
What the OA movement needs is entrepreneurs, not institutional mandates.

Joe Esposito


On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 16:03:10 -0800 (PST), Anthony Watkinson
<anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com> wrote:

> I find no evidence here that scholars particularly want to deposit their
> refereed research in institutional repositories. It would be extremely
> surprising if scholars did not submit their their refereed research if
> they are told to do so by authority especially if they think that by not
> doing so they will not get grants or even lose their jobs (the same
> thing for many). History and experience has shown that few refuse to do
> what they are told in such circumstance. Nevertheless in this regard it
> is interesting that a big report commissioned by JISC and written by a
> large group containing associates of Professor Harnad reports that:
> 
> There are a handful of educational institutions that have gone so far as
> to mandate that its authors deposit copies of all their research
> articles in the institutional e-print archive
> (http://www.eprints.org/signup/fullist.php); the best example of this is
> Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia.The mandating
> policy is only recently announced and, although it is now officially in
> place, the university is taking a softly-softly approach to enforcing it
> to avoid alienating faculty members.
> 
> For this report see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/ACF1E88.pdf
> (page 52).
> 
> As usual Professor Harnad has given a string of references.  The various
> surveys by Key Perspectives are well known but the samples are small and
> not to my mind representative of any population except those who decided
> to fill in the questionnaires. As I have already said, it would be very
> surprising if the majority of academics showed a willingness to revolt
> against a mandate.
> 
> Of the other references, the first (Hajjem) is to a series of slides in
> French, which appears to relate to a piece of work supervised in Quebec by
> Professor Harnad himself.  There respondents appear to be from one
> university and number 88.
> 
> The recent survey in South Africa (De Beer) seems at a first glance of the
> 233 pages to be a solid piece of work but there are only 74 respondents
> (who have given permission for their returned questionnaires to be used)
> and they appear to come from LIS and IT staff etc at Stellenbosch.  I
> cannot see the relevance of the recommendation (so what!) quoted by
> Professor Harnad to the larger debate.
> 
> His thinking seems to be:
> 
> OA is good for everyone. The way to OA is self-archiving. Therefore we
> should force academics to submit their refereed research in institutional
> repositories. When I write about it, apart from quoting myself
> interminably, I shall drag in every scrap of evidence that seems to back
> up my position and forget the I myself am an academic.
> 
> I cannot understand why OA advocates still feel they have to pretend that
> the academic community is behind them in their endeavour - see for example
> the quote from Bill Hubbard in announcing the DOAR project (see
> http://www.opendoar.org/:)
> 
> Such repositories have mushroomed over the last 2 years in response to
> calls by scholars and researchers worldwide to provide open access to
> research information.
> 
> Which institutional repositories have been set up as a result of calls
> from scholars and reseachers to provide OA? Why pretend that this is the
> case?
> 
> Anthony Watkinson