Comments on: Depositing documents in repositories: Which repositories should we use?

By: Stuart Yeates

Stuart Yeates — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:14:58 +0000

James Cummings of the AHDS / Oxford Text Archive just sent me a link to an excellent post by Chris Rusbridge:

http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2007/07/subject-versus-institutional.html

Looks like Chris beat me to this issue and his resolution comes down to money.

By: Ross Gardler

Ross Gardler — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:02:07 +0000

Is it sufficient to say “in the researcher’s own Institutional Repository”? I note from Stevan Harnard post on “Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates” (see previous comment) that the emphasis is on OAI compliant repositories, that makes sense. However, don’t we also need to ensure that people are aware of the repository and can actually find the data within?

By submitting to multiple repositories aren’t both maximising the reachability of the content and helping to ensure preservation is likely (through redundancy)?

Why limit ourselves to a single institutional repository?

By: Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:32:32 +0000

Where should research (preprints, published articles, theses, data) be deposited?

In the researcher’s own Institutional Repository (IR) first (other repositories too, if desired, for redundancy). Oxford made a serious mistake in not migrating your deposit, but these are early days. Universities will come to understand their responsibilities once Open Access IR content grows, worldwide, and with it the understanding of what OA IRs are about, and for. Rational, coherent IR policies and practices will soon evolve. Your thesis deposit was alas one of the early casualties. (Fortunately, redeposit is only a few keystrokes away, and both you and your text are still alive and well!)

The primary function of OA IRs is to provide OA for immediate, ongoing research use. Their secondary function is preservation (and this will become central once IRs take over the access-provision and preservation function from journal publishers and libraries).

Preservation means a systematic, continuous, global redundancy and migration policy. All achievable, but what’s needed first is the OA content. That will drive the preservation policy, not vice versa.

Model University Self-Archiving Policy

Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum