e-prints: the nottingham experience stephen pinfield and mike gardner
TRANSCRIPT
E-prints: the Nottingham Experience
Stephen Pinfield and Mike Gardner
User participation
• The biggest challenge: encouraging user participation– or: ‘we built it…so why aren’t they
coming?’• Forms of participation:
– contribute content– search / use the archive
Getting the content
Two stages:
• Short term: enough content to set up demonstrator
• Medium-long term: critical mass to provide service
• Stage 1 > Stage 2: ‘demonstration is better than description’
Demonstrator
• Using ‘real’ content– more impressive to users– more useful for archive managers: ‘learning by
doing’
• Easiest approach: publications already in the public domain
– on institutional web site• personal pages• departmental pages
– on existing e-prints archives
Advocacy
• The context– structural problems in academic publishing – e-prints a possible solution
• Immediate benefits– for researchers– for policy makers
• Addressing their concerns
Arguing for e-prints
The context:Structural problems in the academic publishing industry– ‘impact barriers’ – ‘access barriers’
but….academics are not normally interested in the ‘serials crisis’ per se
What’s in it for the researcher?
• Lower impact barriers– papers more visible– cited more
• Ease of access• OAI functionality
– interoperability
What’s in it for the researcher?
• Lower impact barriers– papers more visible– cited more
• Ease of access• OAI functionality
– interoperability
• Value added services– hit counts– personalised publications lists– citation analyses: OpCit project, CiteBase
What’s in it for policy makers?
• Raising profile of institution• Managing institutional information assets• RAE management• Long-term cost savings
but….beware of premature reductions in periodicals budgets!
Addressing their concerns
Common concerns:
• IPR - particularly copyright• Quality control - particularly peer review• Work load - theirs!• Undermining the tried and tested status quo• Visibility - compared with web pages
IPR and copyright
• Traditionally authors sign over copyright• But who actually owns copyright?• Best to assume authors do• Encourage / assist authors to:
– Place articles with progressive publishers who do not require copyright sign over
– Negotiate exceptions to sign over– Retain copyright or e-distribution rights– At worst, get round copyright restrictions by depositing a pre-
print + corrections in an e-print archive (Harnad-Oppenheim strategy)
• Authors can then deposit most give-away literature in e-prints archives as well as submit to journals
Not either / or
Quality control
• In short term: peer review with journal publishers– authors should continue to submit articles to high impact
traditional journals– but also contribute to e-prints archives
• In medium term: peer review and publication could be separated - could be organised by:
– publishers but also– institutions or– professional / learned societies– other subject groupings
Pre-prints v. post-prints
• Should the archive include pre-prints? Key collection development policy issue
• Different subject cultures– pre-print culture e.g. Physics– pre-print averse e.g. Medicine
• Different archives?• The idea of pre-prints should not be over
done– ‘e-prints’ and ‘pre-prints’ should not be mixed up
Work load: archive submission
• Academics put off by– increased bureaucracy– need to learn new processes and systems– need to convert file formats
• Mediated submission in the short term• ‘The library will do the work’
– file format conversion– depositing e-prints– creation of metadata
‘Tried and tested’ system
• Some academics content with status quo– reputations made within the system– object to ‘anti-publisher’ stance– some editors may be paid by publishers
• Self-archiving as complement to status quo…not either / or
Visibility
• OAI metadata not accessible to standard search engines
• Responses:– We have found search engines do pick up
metadata from browse pages - but this is not efficient
– DP9: OAI Gateway Service for Web Crawlers
Advocacy methods
• Advocacy web site• Briefing paper• Literature e.g. SPARC leaflet• Institutional magazines• Presenting at departmental meetings
and university committees• Special advocacy events
The players
Who?• Senior LIS staff• Subject librarians• ….
To whom?• Academic enthusiasts in different departments• Department/School approach - champion at senior level• Senior managers• Institutional administrators
Stage 1: getting them on board
Changing roles
• Library: managing institutional information assets
• Library: publisher on behalf of the institution?
• LIS staff at centre of scholarly communication process
[email protected]@Nottingham.ac.uk