From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 09:42:21 -0400

This is vintage Harnad, saying to librarians:

"trust those who understand OA far, far better than you do. . . . "

Is it any wonder that the subscription business continues to grow?

Joe Esposito


On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 7:35 PM, Andrew A. Adams <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The challenge now for UK Universities will be to keep librarians out of the
>> way of reserachers, or their assistants, depositing the basic meta-data and
>> full text in the repository. At the University of Reading, where I was
>> involved in early developments around the IR but left the University before
>> the final deposit mandate (*) was adopted and the process decided on, they
>> have librarians acting as a roadblock in getting material
>> uploaded.Thisistotheextentthat a paper published in an electronic proceedings
>> at a conference was refused permission to be placed in the repository, for
>> example, while there is a significant delay in deposited materials becoming
>> visible, while librarians do a host of (mostly useful but just added value
>> and not necessary) checking. Sigh, empire building and other bureaucratic
>> nonsense getting in the way of the primary mission - scholarly communications.
>>
>> (*) They have a deposit mandate but refuse to call it that. I'm not sure why,
>> butthey insist on calling it a "policy". If one reads this policy, it's a
>> mandate (albeit not an ideal one). For a University with an overly strong
>> management team and a mangerialist approach, this unwillingness to call a
>> spade a spade and a mandate a mandate, seems odd. Perhaps it's that this
>> policy came from a bottom up development and not a senior management idea so
>> they're unwilling to give it a strong name.
>>
>> --
>> Professor Andrew A Adams                      [log in to unmask]
>> Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
>> Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
>> Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/
>
>
> Andrew is so right.
>
> We did the rounds of this at Southampton, where the library (for obscure reasons of its own) wanted to do time-consuming and frustrating (for the author) "checks" on the deposit (is it suitable? is it legal? are the metadata in order?). In ECS we bagged that right away. And now ECS has "fast lane" exception in the university repository (but alas other departments do not). Similar needless roadblocks (unresolved) at UQAM.
>
> Librarians: I know your hearts are in the right place. But please, please trust those who understand OA far, far better than you do, that this library vetting -- if it needs to be done at all -- should be done after the deposit has already been made (by the author) and has already been made immediately OA (by the software). Please don't add to publishers' embargoes and other roadblocks to OA by adding gratuitous ones of your own.
>
> Let institutional authors deposit and make their deposits OA directly, without intervention, mediation or interference. Then if you want to vet their deposits, do so and communicate with them directly afterward.
>
> P.S. This is all old. We've been through this countless times before.
>
> Dixit
>
> Weary Archivangelist, still fighting the same needless, age-old battles, on all sides...