RE: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy Proposal MF //

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Mark, the advantages you give for the use of publishers sites over
self-archived articles are not inherent, but merely the result of systems
having been optimized for this form of publication.

The findability of OA is not very high now. But if a principal mode of
publication was posting on a disciplinary site (as I prefer) or on a
network of university sites (as Stevan Harnad prefers) , the indexing
systems could very easily be set up so that this would be the natural
place to go.  I think we will have experience with this very soon, from
PubMedCentral.  For the closest analog, the easiest way of finding a paper
in some areas of physics is simply to search arXiv--if it has also been
published conventionally, there will be a link.

The reliability of self-archived drafts as currently practiced is indeed a
problem. But if the system were such that they were to be relied on, then
there would be many ways of ensuring it.  The simplest one is the one
which in effect arXiv uses, of having a group of extremely competent
authors preparing their manuscripts in a very reliable document processing
system.  Alternatively, again PMC may offer a demonstration, as their
intent (I simplify here)  is to accept only articles in XML, which they
will then recompose. Indeed, they will not store these as separate
articles, but generate the displayed version on the fly.  At present, they
consider the publisher's version the voucher copy, but it could just as
easily be their's.

There are many ways to do things well, but the worst way to do it is to
have a system of material being available in different forms via different
routes to different people and findable in different ways-- which is
exactly the present system in its current state.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Funk" <mefunk@mail.med.cornell.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy 
Proposal

> Joe conflates self-archiving with a publisher giving it all away. But
> take a look at self-archiving vs. a library subscription through a
> user's eyes. There is obviously a convenience factor in going to a
> publisher's journal site; the PDFs look exactly like the printed
> version; and search results from databases lead a user directly to the
> site. These are heavy advantages for users. Discovering self-archived
> articles is much harder; they don't look like the printed version; and
> databases don't point to them. Truly only the most dedicated users, with
> no access to the publisher's site, are currently using archived papers
> as a substitute for the publisher's version.

> Mark Funk
> Head, Collection Development
> Weill Cornell Medical Library
> mefunk@mail.med.cornell.edu