Dorothea Salo, Marketing an IR, Caveat Lector, March 18, 2006. Excerpt:
I would strongly recommend a cheap, agile, multifaceted, flexible IR marketing campaign over a single sweated-over Master Communication Plan. The simple reason is uncertainty. Tying an IR to a single message (as many marketing plans insist that you do) presumes the existence of one message that will be effective. Even a plan that allows for tailoring different messages to different audiences presumes that you know how to identify your audiences and what messages will work with each one. I’m quite convinced this is not so. Of the people I’ve hooked to the IR I run, a few liked the preservation aspects of it, several went for the increased impact factor, some just wanted a place to keep their finished work organized, and one or two agreed with the altruism arguments. I can’t see any correlation between willingness to participate in an IR and discipline, career status, previous ties with the library, type of research performed, or any other typically-salient characteristics of research faculty.
There may be some underlying order to all this that I simply haven’t seen. The best I can reply is that nobody else has yet seen it either, aside from the obvious knowledge that the sciences are moving faster than the humanities. (And yet… I’m working with an English professor on some stellar 19th-century-lit work too specialized to find a print publisher. There is room to maneuver, even in the humanities.)...
So that’s my advice. Don’t bother with long involved planning sessions. Don’t bother with marketing committees at first (though later on, it may well help to share information). Brainstorm a page of ideas, pick some to try, and try them. When some don’t pan out, pick others. Embrace serendipity. Listen to and act on what people tell you about the IR, and about faculty beliefs and practices. And have fun! Laugh! I’ve caught a few people, I firmly believe, just because I enjoy and believe in what I’m doing and it shows when I talk about it.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/20/2006 08:46:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
