🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:

> Dear Stevan:
> 
> Here is a query from a CSIR librarian (at National Institute of 
> Oceanography, Goa). Why is it that not all entries in OAIster 
> have full text? he asks.

Dear Arun,

The answer is very simple: 

Because only 15% of OA's target content (the annual 2.5 million full-text
research articles published in the world's 24,000 journals) is as yet
being self-archived, worldwide.

    http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/
    http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm

That is OA's problem. That is why we do not yet have 100% OA. And that
is why so much of OAIster 

    http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/

and even of most institutional "OA" repository content

    http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse

is currently just *metadata,* not full-text.

And the solution is also 100% clear: 

As and when the institutions that produce the 2.5 million annual research
articles in the 24,000 journals (and the research-funders that fund it)
*mandate* that the articles they produce must be self-archived, we will
have 100% OA.

The publishers are not to blame. 92% of them have already given their
green light to self-archiving. They cannot be expected to perform the
authors' keystrokes for them!

    http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

In a sense the researchers are to blame, because 85% of them do not yet
self-archive all their work. But the latest JISC author survey (Swan &
Brown 2005)

    Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2005) Open access self-archiving: An
    author study. Technical Report, Joint Information Systems Committee
    (JISC), UK FE and HE funding councils (not yet published). Preprint:
    http://cogprints.org/4385/

indicates as clearly as one can indicate to those who have eyes to see
and ears to hear that the researchers themselves *state explicitly*
that they are quite busy and that -- just as they *publish* only because
of the publish-or-perish carrot/stick incentives their institutions and
funders have in place -- they will only self-archive if and when their
institutions and funders *require* them to do self-archive.

But if and when their institutions and funders do require them to do so, 81%
(of the over 1300 sampled researchers worldwide, across all disciplines)
respond that they *will* self-archive, and self-srchive  *willingly*
(14% will self-archive reluctantly, and 5% respond that they will not comply).

    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.ppt

The actual results for the only two institutions worldwide that have so
far actually implemented such a self-archiving mandate -- (1) the Southampton
University Department of Electronics and Computer Science and (2) CERN --
have borne this out completely. Their self-archiving rates for their current
annual research output are now both over 90%:

http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk%2F
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcdsweb.cern.ch%2F

So there is your answer, Arun! The rest is just about when institutions and
funders will go ahead and do the obvious, in order to reach the optimal
and inevitable (100% OA).

The signs are positive (University of Bielefeld is the lastest to announce
a clear, definitive self-archiving policy), 

    http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php

but the rate of institutional OA self-archiving policy adoption is
still awaiting its definitive growth-spurt. Let us hope that that will
come with the long-awaited and imminent announcement of the RCUK policy
recommendation:

    "Will the RCUK support OA?"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4464.html

if that indeed takes the form recommended by the UK Science and Technology
Select Committee and the Berlin Declaration:

    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
    http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html

Best wishes,

Stevan

> Arun
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Dr. Murari P Tapaswi"
> To: "Subbiah Arunachalam"
> Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 12:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Promoting open Access
> 
> > Dear Dr Arunachalam,
> >
> > I always read many of your mails on OA with interest and curse myself
> > because I am, so far, unable to contribute anything in this area.
> >
> > I tried to reach to the link you provided below and had a test search
> > (searched on Indian ocean AND nodules). It retrieved 4 items. Of the 4 
> > items
> > only 1 item had a full-text access. Is it not a waste of time to do this
> > exercise with a hope that we would get access to the full-text literature?
> > Please pardon me for a straight question.
> >
> > Regards, - Tapaswi
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Subbiah Arunachalam"
> > To: "c3net" <c3net@dgroups.org>; <oa-india@dgroups.org>;
> > <lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:01 PM
> > Subject: [LIS-Forum] Promoting open Access
> >
> >
> > Friends:
> >
> > Promoting open access has at least two parts. One is to set up an archive 
> > at one's own institution, as Rajashekar had done at IISc, and populate it 
> > with the institution's research papers quickly. The second part is to help the
> > faculty and students (and researchers in general) to take advantage of the
> > increasing number of papers in the world's open archives.
> >
> > Please tell all your clients (research scientists, professors and 
> > students) to search for papers relevant to their work using
> > http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bib-idx?c=oaister;page=simple.
> >
> > There are  5,475,850 records from 480 institutions as of 5 June 2005. And
> > the number is increasing every day.
> >
> > Best wishes.
> >
> > Arun
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