Though free to download, open source repository software requires maintenance as well as server space for storage. This can cost USD300,000 a year (on top of set-up costs) making it prohibitively expensive for many institutions. By contrast, ProQuest's Digital Commons@ is available only on a subscription basis. In the package, institutions get server space for content and the majority of maintenance is done by ProQuest. At the institution-end, ProQuest claims that library staff need only two or three days training and to devote a few hours a week to operating the program. In addition to this, ProQuest is offering a discounted trial subscription rate to clients. One significant feature of Digital Commons@ is its support for peer reviewing. This can be integrated into the content submission process, though it is up to the institutions themselves to find reviewers....[W]hile ProQuest have done well to include a peer review element to their product, none of the institutions questioned were using this, nor did they have any plans to....At the University of Surrey, authors are allowed by publishers to upload work onto repositories as long as it is in a pre-formatted, post-reviewed version. Many authors do not keep this version however, and Price claims that the library knows of over 1,000 papers within copyright legislation that could be uploaded if the authors had kept the pre-formatted versions. On the evidence of the Digital Commons@ repositories currently in use and the views expressed in the surveys, ProQuest's product's future may not be guaranteed. Many of the repositories are under-populated or contain non-premium content and until this changes, benefits in the technology will be hard to appreciate....[W]ithout pressure from university authorities from above, and motivation of academics from below, ProQuest's Digital Commons@, like other digital repository products, seems a product too far ahead of its time.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/09/2005 08:21:00 PM.
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.
