[T]he fact that OA and OAI were the source of IRs might just have something to do with what IRs should be used for (as a matter of first and urgent priority). It is not that storing and preserving every digitised object under the sun is not a good idea. It is just a question of priorities. For universities and research institutions, the immediate priority is this: Scholarly and scientific research usage and impact have been needlessly lost, cumulatively, since paper publication first began, because paper costs and distribution necessarily meant that many would-be users could not afford to access and use most research output. This has always meant a great loss of potential research impact and hence research progress to researchers, their institutions, and to research itself. Ever since the creation of the Internet, however, with FTP, the Web, and now OAI-compliant OA IR software and IRs, this annual research-impact bleed can in fact be stanched. Yet the bleed is still being stanched spontaneously for only about 15% of the planet's annual research output today; 85% of it is still being lost, daily, and cumulatively. This continuing bleed is hence a needless loss to the planet's research institutions, the primary consumers of research findings, whose daily bread (pardon the messy, mixed metaphor!) is research impact and progress (and funding), as well as to the planet's teaching/learning institutions, the secondary consumers of research knowledge and progess, and of course each nation's tax-payers, the tertiary consumers of research applications and benefits, who also happen to be the funders of much of the research....Let us stanch the bleeding immediately, as a matter of priority, and then get on with the generic digital preservation agenda.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/19/2006 08:13:00 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.
