[open-science] [Open-access] OKF at Open Repositories 2014

Wed Dec 11 15:27:55 UTC 2013

This is a great and much-needed discussion of the ways in which IRs need to
grow (or evolve) in order to provide both depositors/authors and readers
with the functionalities they desire.

FWIW, a number of institutions in the US (including ours) are moving away
from DSpace towards Hydra, which will give the freedom of development so
that we can build the functionalities mentioned above. Everyone agrees that
the silos we've created for each institution are outdated. We're trying to
crack the nut of building repos that primarily serve authors that don't
have centralized subject repos like Dryad to deposit their scholarship,
while also allowing for greater collaboration across institutions.

One q I have for this list is what specific tasks would a researcher who
wishes to harvest IR content via API need to be able to do? Our internal
discussions about desired new IR functions don't include an API for
researchers--but that doesn't mean it _couldn't_ include such an API.
Feedback from the list would be appreciated and could inform future
development.

Also, a few points:

- In the US, there's also been a movement towards creating a searchable
federation of IRs called SHARE [1], which originally was designed to
compete with the CHORUS proposal. HOWEVER, from what I've heard, even if
SHARE dies as a CHORUS competitor, many still recognize the value inherent
in having a nationally federated IR system and the project would likely
move forward in any event. SHARE would need to ensure that its content
could be easily searched and indexed by a variety of systems beyond Google
Scholar and OAIster [2], which has sub-par search capabilities.

- I agree with both Jan that usability has been a major socio-technical
barrier for researchers to adopt the practice of making their work OA in
any repository. We (IR admins and developers) need to fix this major
problem before we can offer IRs as a solution to any problem of access or
preservation, and we DEFINITELY need to make sure our IRs are usable before
we encourage faculty to work towards enacting OA mandates.

- A reminder about why we need an open alternative to Google Scholar:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EBKkhzrBPO39NWO71423f9TLU5oiwOkNb_z5ULfomjI/edit

Warmly,
Stacy Konkiel
Science Data Management Librarian
Indiana University

[1]
http://www.arl.org/focus-areas/public-access-policies/shared-access-research-ecosystem-share
[2] http://oaister.worldcat.org/advancedsearch

On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 6 Dec 2013, at 16:13, Emanuil Tolev <emanuil at cottagelabs.com> wrote:
>
> So far we have
>
> 1/ basic infrastructure with metadata, original files and indexed full text
> 2/ (the right) usage stats
>
> http://Altrmetric.com <http://altrmetric.com/> and http://Impactstory.org<http://impactstory.org/>strike me as nice bits of kits which already do all the "look your article
> was downloaded > 100 times" stuff, so #1 could be an additional data source
> for these services. Obviously they could go away at any point, but that's
> hardly a concern right now considering we haven't managed #1 in the UK yet.
>
> Another thing...
>
> On 6 December 2013 15:07, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Salut Laurent,
>>
>> You touch upon a very serious point. You should indeed consider
>> researchers' egos more, as you sort of admit. After all, the issue is not
>> so much technological (in spite of appearances) as it is
>> psycho-sociological. Egos are important in what is, in many respects, the
>> academic 'ego-system'.
>>
>
>
>> The system hangs together with recognition, credits, acknowledgement and
>> the like.
>>
>
> This seems incontrovertibly true. But why does that work against a
> centralised system of access / easier access in other forms though?
>
>
> It doesn't. I just think the 'cultural' issues are underrepresented in any
> discussions. One such issue is central vs. institutional repositories.
> That's a choice, hardly a technical issue.
>
>
> The thing being available doesn't mean people won't give credit.
>
>
> Of course not. The 'thing being available' is a conditio sine qua non. But
> as Laurent said, "we do not provide adequate statistics and we do not
> consider researchers; ego enough."
>
> On the contrary, it means more people will see it, more will use it, and
> more will give credit. Take the opposite: make it available only in a
> closed-access journal and no PDF anywhere .. and others will still be able
> to plagiarise or not cite + even less people will actually see / cite the
> article. Maybe I need to talk to somebody with more nuanced understanding
> of this bit, since I hope this is not the ol' piracy argument all over, but
> with recognition substituted for money.
>
>
> No, it isn't at all. But the cause of open access, which I fully espouse,
> would benefit from understanding the deeper psycho-sociological issues and
> (lack of) motives why such a large number of researchers still stick by the
> traditional system and do not deposit willingly, so that 'mandates' are
> needed. Just calling researchers ignorant, or even stupid, as is done by
> some, simply doesn't wash. Those psycho-sociological – cultural, if you
> wish – elements make me think that for readers as well as authors a
> central, easily accessible, e.g. national, or even global, repository with
> standardised and easy deposit and access procedures and rules (e.g.
> TDM-able) is best for everyone. That's I think what Laurent has in mind as
> well. He will correct me if I'm wrong. If deposit and finding/access of
> content in repositories is easy and convenient, authors are more likely to
> see its attractions. One attracts butterflies with honey, not with vinegar.
>
> Jan
>
>
> Greetings,
> Emanuil
>
>
>> The highest barriers and strongest impediments are not technical. Where
>> they are, they can be remedied comparatively easily. The (sub)cultural
>> barriers don't get enough attention, I think (maybe I don't move in the
>> right circles), and those are the most important to break down. We need
>> more psychologists in the discussion to drive it forwards, perhaps.
>>
>> Bon ouiquainde!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Jan
>>
>> On 6 Dec 2013, at 14:43, Laurent Romary <laurent.romary at inria.fr> wrote:
>>
>> For the record, let me defend the “French” model (since there seems to be
>> a Liege one):
>> - central repository to minimise costs and improve visibility (you’ve all
>> hear of HAL, can you name the on at the University of Stirling?)
>> - freedom for institution to define their deposit policy (but I am proud
>> of the Inria mandate)
>> - availability of all content for data mining (OK, you’ll see no CC on
>> the current version, but the new (codename V3) version should go CC-BY (of
>> course; I just wonder why one would ask…)
>> OK. Peter, our PhD repository (tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/<http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/%E2%80%8E>)
>> is full of boring stuff in French, but if you’re interested, do index!
>>
>> To answer the current argument on repositories. The most important thing
>> for me is to ensure that we have a public and sustainable research
>> infrastructure (all words are important). I now see colleagues rushing to
>> ResearchGate or Acdemia just because they receive nice messages tickling
>> their ego and they don’t even notice that their online papers in HAL are
>> downloaded 50 times more. OK, it’s maybe our fault that we do not provide
>> adequate statistics and that we do not consider researchers’ ego enough.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Laurent
>>
>>
>> Le 6 déc. 2013 à 08:09, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> a écrit :
>>
>> For nearly ten years I have tried to promote the idea of indexing or
>> repositories and got nowhere. I wish it were different. As examples:
>>
>> * I ran a funded JISC (UK) project on Open Bibliography.I offered to
>> explore the indexing of theses (unlike NL it is impossible to find online
>> theses in UK other than manually trawling through 200 repos). I presented
>> to the ETHOS project but their priority was to digitize the past.They told
>> me I would have to seek permission from every individual author.
>>
>> * I wrote to Bernard Rentier offering to come to Liege and investigate
>> indexing the ORBI repository on a scientific basis. His repsonse was that
>> they were taking a staged approach and that [paraphrasing] I should wait a
>> few years.
>>
>> * After a tweet I thought that LSE was intested and blogged a proposal to
>> index it. They weren't actually interested.
>>
>> * I wrote several times to the Cambridge Librarian about text-mining. She
>> never acknowledged my mails.
>>
>> More generally:
>>
>> * repo owners are no interested in anyone outside their library doing
>> anything with their content. They have a ?10-year (or longer) plan to
>> federate them
>>
>> * some repo owners (including Liege) deliberately choose CC-NC and refuse
>> to change.
>>
>> So personally I have become disillusions with conventional repos. The UK
>> REF makes it worse as the sole purpose of many repos seems to be to
>> accumulate the content on which the university is formally judged.This does
>> not have to be Open. The mentality is not a service positively exposing
>> content to the world but a bureaucratic management process.
>>
>> It may be different in other countries...
>>
>>
>> No - trying to index even one UK
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Well, sure! I'm not criticising the vision; I'm criticising how far
>>> short of that vision the world we live in currently falls!
>>>
>>> You may find it irrational that an institution wants its faculty's
>>> papers openly available only from their IR and nowhere else. People
>>> whose job it is to count beans will disagree. Needless to say, I'm on
>>> your side, but there's no point in pretending the bean-counters don't
>>> exist.
>>>
>>> -- Mike.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5 December 2013 23:53, Bjoern Brembs <b.brembs at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > On Friday, December 6, 2013, 12:45:25 AM, you wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> They want the world to come to their one
>>> >> special magic web-site and read the papers only there. Which is not
>>> >> that much more advanced than the position of paywalled publishers.
>>> >
>>> > Perhaps I'm really hopelessly naive, but this
>>> > seems so irrational, it shouldn't take much to
>>> > move beyond this argument.
>>> >
>>> >> The real issues here are much more social than technical. As usual.
>>> >
>>> > There is no debating that, I guess :-) Which is
>>> > why visions are important: visions get people
>>> > motivated to be a part in realizing them.
>>> > I believe the vision of getting everything in one place,
>>> > filtered, sorted and immensely relevant is
>>> > powerful!
>>> >
>>> > Bjoern
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Björn Brembs
>>> > ---------------------------------------------
>>> > http://brembs.net
>>> > Neurogenetics
>>> > Universität Regensburg
>>> > Germany
>>> >
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Peter Murray-Rust
>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>> University of Cambridge
>> CB2 1EW, UK
>> +44-1223-763069
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>>
>>
>> Laurent Romary
>> INRIA & HUB-IDSL
>> laurent.romary at inria.fr
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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