Alma Swan shares some preliminary findings on repository deposits in a message posted to the AmSci OA Forum, July 27, 2008. Excerpt:
...I have the results of a small survey of European repository managers waiting for analysis. I have now carried out a v. quick analysis of the relevant questions. The total number of responses from institutional respository managers was 42...
The survey had a question asking how easy it had been to collect content into the repository. I used the answers from that and cross-analysed those against the answers to three other questions: - who deposits the items in the repository - who creates the metadata - what kind of open access policy the institution has.
I apologise for having to describe the results in words only. Normally I would do this graphically too, to make eyeballing easy, but I can't do that here [in a listserv post]....:
1. Comparing the difficulty of collecting content for IRs with (a) no institutional policy, (b) encouragement only and (c) mandatory deposit:
1a. Repositories with no institutional policy for the repository: - Repositories finding it very easy or fairly easy to collect content: 1 - Repositories finding it very difficult or fairly difficult to collect content: 6 - Repositories finding it possible but not easy to collect content: 8
1b. Repositories with an institutional policy encouraging authors to make their work open access: - Repositories finding it very easy or fairly easy to collect content: 2 - Repositories finding it very difficult or fairly difficult to collect content: 3 - Repositories finding it possible but not easy to collect content: 9
1c. Repositories with a mandatory institutional policy on open access: - Repositories finding it very easy or fairly easy to collect content: 5 - Repositories finding it very difficult or fairly difficult to collect content: 0 - Repositories finding it possible but not easy to collect content: 1
Conclusion: The IRs with mandated deposit have the least difficulty collecting content.
2. Comparing the difficulty of collecting content for IRs that have deposit by (a) authors only, (b) librarians only (c) both: ...
Conclusion: The IRs with author-only deposit have the least difficulty collecting content.
3. Comparing the difficulty of collecting metadata for IRs with author deposit vs. librarian deposit: ...
Conclusion: The IRs with author deposit have the least difficulty collecting metadata.
Now that I've been reminded of this survey I shall put out another call for responses. It was specifically designed to compare European repository experiences with the largish study carried out by Charles Bailey and colleagues on US repositories and published by the ARL (SPEC Kit 292). What I haven't done is delve into the registries of repositories, find the biggest ones and ask the managers how things get into their database....
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.
