> >Scirus.com, the web search engine for scientific information launched by > >Elsevier Science last April, has now made 180.000 e-prints from arXiv.org > >(formerly xxx.lanl.gov) available to its users. The e-prints of arXiv.org > >were harvested using the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting of the Open > >Archive Initiative. Scirus has just been voted Best Specialty Search Engine > >in the prestigious Search Engine Awards 2001, and is planning to add > >additional OAI sources to its index in the near future to broaden its > >coverage further.
This is a very, very clever move by Elsevier -- but it does not affect the Budapest Open Access Initiative one way or the other. It's in strict keeping with Elsevier's (and others') "value-added" strategy for trying to hold onto their cash cow (a trojan cow!). It illustrates two things: (1) the value (once again) of the self-archived literature and (2) the generality of "open access": For if material is openly accessible and harvestable via OAI, including even full-text material, there is nothing to prevent commercial re-packagers from harvesting and using it, like any other user. (Why not? They are welcome to do it!) But it is not any sort of threat to open access efforts; on the contrary, it encourages them. (And the trouble with hitching one's fate to these value-added add-ons for a commercial product is that one is always at risk from a non-commercial OAI service-provider -- such as http://citebase.eprints.org/ -- providing the same value, and even more, for free! So it may not save the cash cow for long...) Stevan Harnad