Transcript No Slide Title

perspectives on scholarly communication
Universitaire Stichting – Brussels - October 20th 2002
Herbert Van de Sompel
Los Alamos National Laboratory – Research Library
Houston, we got a problem
It is -- at least -- legitimate to reflect on
the possibility of a digital system for
scholarly communication that is not merely a
scanned copy of the paper system
herbert van de sompel
the journal system
• serials crisis:
increasing journal prices limit, rather
than broaden, access to scholarly research
• IP drain: faculty signs away copyright
• publication delay: journal system can not cope with
increasing volume of scholarly output
• criticism of peer-review:
suppresses ideas,
outcome criticized
• inertia: system is self-stabilizing
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scholarly communication
scholarly communication: traditional view
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the information chain
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scholarly communication: traditional view
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digital?
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the information chain
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free our minds
• forget about who has been doing what and
how in the existing system;
• let’s look at what has to be done in a
system for scholarly communication
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systems for scholarly communication
registration
establishing intellectual priority
certification
certifying quality/validity of research
awareness
ensuring accessibility of research
archiving
preserving research for future use
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{Roosendaal & Geurts}
systems for scholarly communication
registration
establishing intellectual priority
certification
certifying quality/validity of research
awareness
ensuring accessibility of research
archiving
preserving research for future use
rewarding
evaluating & rewarding performance
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{Roosendaal & Geurts}
systems for scholarly communication
awareness
certification
value chain
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registration
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archiving
rewarding
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in a digital, networked world …
In a fully electronic scholarly communication
system, each function of scholarly
communication can be handled:
• in a discrete manner
• in a distributed manner
• by different parties
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disaggregated system: how?
• content providers: open access disciplinespecific eprint servers, institutional repositories,
peer-to-peer research repositories, …
• service providers:
• value-added services that provide
certification, awareness, and archiving,
rewarding functions
• current agents of these functions (e.g.,
societies) can operate in disaggregated model
• new entrants in the system possible
• various business models possible
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disaggregated system
• Lower prices by increasing cost efficiency:
– decoupling value chain forces market
efficiency of individual links
– introduces competition throughout chain,
especially if eprints are in open access
• Reveal that academy contributes most of the
value
– academic labor & institutional investment
drives content, certification, and archiving
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Paul Ginsparg
the Open Archives Initiative
http://www.openarchives.org
OAI’s role
awareness
certification
interoperable grid
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registration
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archiving
rewarding
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OAI’s role
• so far: harvesting of descriptive metadata
• but coming, harvesting of:
• references
• usage logs
• certification metadata
• rights metadata
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economy
technology
scholarly
communication
law
sociology
economy
establish a technological basis that
technology
sociology
allows addressing the other issues.
law
scholarly communication,
other ways?
other ways
• Discipline-based preprint systems; e.g. arXiv,
NCSTRL, …
• Self-archiving approach
• Journals, the other approach; e.g. BMC
• Institutional repositories
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institutional repositories
• Institutionally defined: content generated by
institutional community
• Scholarly content: preprints and working papers,
published articles, enduring teaching materials,
student theses, etc.
• Cumulative & perpetual: preserve ongoing access
to material
• Interoperable & open access: free online global
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rationale for institutional repositories
• Local & immediate
– Increases institutional visibility & prestige by
clarifying institutional sources of research
– Demonstrates institution’s value to public &
private funding sources
– Archives institutional production
– Complements existing scholarly publishing
model
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rationale for institutional repositories
• Global & long-term
– Key component in evolving disaggregated
scholarly publishing model.
– Part of global network of interoperable,
distributed content repositories.
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institutional repositories: how?
• Registration:
– Institutional repositories supply basic step of
initial registration. Includes establishing
priority.
– Alternative registration mechanisms
accommodate increased volume of research
output.
– Registered materials in open access
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institutional repositories: how?
• Certification:
– Repository “certification” essentially
imprimatur of sponsoring
institution/department (sometimes more,
sometimes less).
– Peer-review on top of registered content.
– Disaggregation allows new mechanisms for
certification in addition to peer review.
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institutional repositories: how?
• Awareness:
– Service-level awareness tools enabled by OAIcompliance & interoperability.
– Search engines index the descriptive metadata
harvested from federated repositories.
– Search engines can use other metadata in
services: references, certification metadata,
usage information, …
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institutional repositories: how?
• Archiving:
– No final answer on digital archiving
– However, disaggregation helps put institutions
(libraries?) — rather than journal publishers —
in charge of digital archiving.
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institutional repositories: how?
• Rewarding:
– Digital communication facilitates the
generation of other metrics:
– Citation databases not limited to selected
journals
– Usage information
– Certification by which parties?
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scholarly communication, other ways:
obstacles
obstacles to implementation
• Technical issues:
• global level (OAI, …)
• institutional level
• Unknown cost parameters
• Current journal system role in academic
advancement
• Systemic inertia
• Faculty participation
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overcoming faculty objection
• Impediment to formal publication: trend for
publishers to accept that online posting is not
prior publication. Develop discipline-specific
policies.
• Intellectual property and data abuse issues:
• repository registration protects priority
• retain rights to eprint
• no more plagiarism online than offline
• machine readable rights
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overcoming faculty objection
• Perceived quality:
• label & differentiate types of content
• reveal certification methods
• Undermines existing journals: repositories coexist
with existing publishing system
• Increased work load: put library in charge of
metadata tagging, formatting and reformatting, etc.
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overcoming faculty objection
• Rewarding:
• Institutions must reward registration in
institutional repository
• Funding agencies must reward institutions and
scholars for registration in institutional
repositories
• Other metrics must become available. OAI will
facilitate their emergence
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ACTION!
• Initiate institution- & consortia-based pilot
projects. Provide national funding.
• Support academy-friendly author/publisher
agreements
• Support learned societies in establishing new
roles in disaggregated model
• Define alternative rewarding strategies:
institutional, funding agencies, …
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questions
http://www.openarchives.org
[email protected]
http://www.arl.org/SPARC/
[email protected]
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