The concept of the institutional repository is currently discussed in library science and in practice around the globe. Many universities hope for significant advantages caused by publishing servers collecting the outflow of their scientific institutions as electronic documents and providing them via internet. If nothing else they count on a huge advertising impact for their own institution. For this reason, in recent years, many universities and scientific institutions in Germany as in the rest of the world decided to build their own document server. From the beginning, there has been a close link between this approach and the international open-access movement. Not a few represent the view, both concepts could create a decisive influence on the changing system of scientific publishing. But contrary to the initial optimistic estimates, many operators of this type of archive servers today find themselves confronted with significant difficulties. In this regard primarily the lack of acceptance by the scientific authors proves to be a fundamental problem that may threaten the success of the concept.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 3/24/2009 04:51:00 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.
