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Re: Against Conflating OA Self-Archiving With Preservation-Archiving

     Prior Amsci Topic Thread:
     "Against Conflating OA Self-Archiving With Preservation-Archiving"
     http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5500.html

On Tue, 14 Aug 2007, Peter Hirtle wrote:


When I speak of "archives"... it is as an archivist.
For my community, a term like "self-archiving" is an oxymoron -
I think we need not be that rigid with the word "archiving." It really just means storing. The relevant thing for OA is that self-archiving provides free online access, not that the deposit is being preserved.

(It *is* being preserved, too, but that is not the point: We are talking about authors' final accepted drafts, not the publisher's PDF or the paper edition: the latter is the one that preservationists should be preoccupied with. The self-archived version is a supplement, not a substitute.)

Self-archiving and open access are fine for providing immediate access to one's work. I have used both.
That's it. And hence the discussion should really end there, insofar as OA is concerned...

But no self-archive or open access system (or institutional repository, for that matter) yet meets the standards established for an Open Archival Information System-compliant (yet another "archive"), Trusted Digital Repository.
So what? OA is about the Access Problem, not the Preservation Problem.

What is worse, as I argued in a paper in the April 15th issue of RLG DigiNews, most of the publishers that allow one to deposit post-prints in an institutional repository do not grant authors the rights to given to the repositories the permissions they need in order to be able to preserve the deposited articles over time.
So what? That will take care of itself, with time. What won't, is OA itself. So let OA stay focused on providing OA, not veer off into the irrelevance of preservation archiving.

(To ward off the inevitable torrent: Yes, of course OA content is being preserved too -- otherwise the (little) stuff that authors had the good sense to self-archive 20 years ago would not still be with us, and still OA, today. And of course IRs can and will take care of preserving their content. What they need, urgently, is that content, which authors are not yet providing. Not publishers' permission to preserve, which is an utter red herring.)

The only way one can ensure that one's deposited information might be available over time is to use one of the author's addenda (or re-write the publisher contract).
The best way to ensure that it is accessible, and usable, today, is to self-archive it. Worry about preservation once the content's up there (and if/when it's the only version afloat). Not now.

So there is an immense difference in terms. Self-archiving, open access, and institutional repositories denote computer systems that facilitate near-immediate access to writings. Trusted Digital Repositories (aka "archives") are established, funded, and have the necessary legal, technical, and administrative capabilities to maintain digital information over time in either a closed or open system.
Yes; and let us focus on author-version self-archiving and IRs for OA -- and publisher version archiving and TDRs for preservation.

The problem with the language is that the use of the term "archive" in "self-archiving" implies to many that the TDR requirements are being met - when instead, in reality, access is guaranteed only as long as the "self-archives" does not have to make a copy of the original work.
Actually, neither OA self-archiving nor preservation archiving means much to much of anybody, since so little of either is actually being done today. But it seems to me that we can see and understand the difference in the target content and the agenda, once it's pointed out, without having to submit the locution "archiving" to any Solomonian slicing. It's just normal polysemy...

If one wants an article to be permanently available, one has to secure the necessary right to do so from the publisher and find a IR that is committed to becoming a TDR - or rely upon the publisher to take advantage of initiatives such as PORTICO and LOCKSS to ensure that access (open or otherwise) will exist over time.
Indeed. And let those who are fussed about that, devote their efforts to making sure that the official versions of all 2.5 million annual published articles in all 25,000 peer-reviewed journals are permanently available by devoting themselves to TDR archiving.

And let those who are fussed about the needless daily, weekly, monthly, yearly loss of research usage and impact from which research is currently (anosognosically) suffering, devote their efforts to making sure that the author's versions of all 2.5 million annual published articles in all 25,000 peer-reviewed journals are at long last self-archived (sic) in their authors' institutions' IRs.

Amen,

Stevan Harnad