Philip Hunter and Michael Day, Institutional repositories, aggregator services and collection development, January 2005. Abstract: 'Institutional repositories are managed collections of the intellectual output of university and other research-based institutions. This report introduces collection development issues from two distinct perspectives. Firstly, it highlights issues that may need to be addressed by institutional repositories as OAI data providers. For example, repositories may need to make decisions on the type, quality and format of content, on submission workflows, rights management, access, sustainability and evaluation. Secondly, the report will consider similar issues from the perspective of third party service providers like ePrints UK that harvest selective metadata from institutional repositories. The concluding section will provide some recommendations on best practice for repositories to support such harvesting.'
Philip Hunter, Institutional e-Print Repositories: Business and IPR Issues, March 16, 2005. Abstract: 'A report summarising business models and IPR issues in the context of the e-Prints UK poject.' Excerpt: 'What is not clear so far is how business models might apply to public organisations such as universities, archives, libraries etc. Many if not most public organisations do nevertheless have extant business models, usually in the form of a mission statement or corporate strategy....Most public organisations, in common with large corporate bodies, tend to employ multiple concurrent business models. For example University Libraries will employ a merchant model in its dealings with publishers and a community model in it's dealings with students....The overriding modus operendi for UK public organisations, however, is a model that is essentially fixed by the community through the government. For Universities this model works something like this: The government collects taxes and gives part of that money to educators. The educators increase the potential value of the workforce by producing well educated students. The students join the workforce, earn money and pay tax to the Government. This type of model could be called a social subscription model....Public organisations should embrace the OA approach for the following reasons. Sharing knowledge is a primary function and as we have seen is already written into their business models. It provides one means of conforming to the freedom of information acts - enacted Europe wide in 2000 and 2001....Any organisation using a public subscription model is very likely to be both amenable to and gain benefit from integrating the OA approach. Many private organisations could benefit from the OA approach at some level.'
Michael Day, Institutional repositories and research assessment, undated. Abstract: 'This study concerns the potential role of institutional repositories in supporting research assessment in universities with specific reference to the Research Assessment Exercises in the UK. After a brief look at research evaluation methods, it introduces the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), focusing on its role in determining the distribution of research funding, the assessment process itself, and some concerns that have been raised by participants and observers. The study will then introduce institutional repositories and consider the ways in which they might be used to enhance the research assessment process in the UK. It will first consider the role of repositories in providing institutional support for the submission and review process. Secondly, the paper will consider the ways in which citation linking between papers in repositories might be used as the basis for generating quantitative data on research impact that could be used for assessment. Thirdly, this study will consider other ways in which repositories might be able to provide quantitative data, e.g. usage statistics or Webometric link data, which may be able to be used - together with other indicators - to support the evaluation of research.'
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.
