Abstract: Over the years, our institutions have built large hardcopy repositories for the items they felt were important. Today we are engaged in building digital repositories to house a broad range of materials. In order for these repositories to be good stewards of the information they contain, we must focus on management, infrastructure and community support. We also must be aware of the trends that are occurring, since these repositories are still in their infancy....
Although many digital repositories are focusing on a broad range of materials, some are only focusing on scholarly publications and building repositories that provide open access to those publications. The open access movement hopes that scholarly publications will be made available either through open access repositories (the Green Road) or by being published in open access journals (the Gold Road)....[T]he Green and Gold Roads are not a fork in the road. [We don't have to choose between them.]
During my presentation, I mentioned that it is important for faculty members to see a real benefit in submitting materials to the repository. After my presentation, Scott Nicholson mentioned that faculty need to produce a body of evidence, when they come up for tenure and promotion, that shows the impact of their work. He said:
If the library is involved with the repository, they could produce for each faculty member, a summary of how many times their work was accessed over a period of time, and a list of places that link to their works. That's something we can't get from a journal article nearly as easily....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/11/2007 10:31:00 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.
