Institutional repositories enable the storage (archiving) of all scientific work in a digital form for the purposes of access and preservation. Numerous studies have demonstrated that above all they provide added value in the form of increase in visibility, usage and impact for scientific work. Deposit rates, however, will remain very low (at around 15%), until institutions adopt mandatory deposit policies.
Mandatory deposit has shown itself to be the only way to ensure the deposit of 100% of annual research output in an open institutional archive, an essential condition for deriving all the benefits anticipated from Open Access. The mandate should be linked to assessment: this will guarantee a high deposit rate and facilitate the work of assessment commissions.
Linking mandatory deposit with the assessment process has two advantages:
an increase in the number of documents deposited in open institutional archives, thus guaranteeing the regular updating of data,
a considerable reduction in the work necessary to prepare assessments, for both assessors and researchers....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/05/2007 12:47:00 PM.
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.
