dear Colleagues, the physics ArXiv has a linear increase of the number of papers put in per month, this gives a quadratic acceleration of the total content (growth rate of Data base), not linear. Total amount by now may be at 10-15 % of all papers in physics. Linear growth of input rate means the number of physicists and fields using it rises, while in each field (and physicist) a saturation is reached after a first exponential individual rise.
Never there will be a saturation such that all papers will go this way, since in different fields culture and habits and requirements are different. -- [That is why it is e.g. best, to keep letter distribution by horses at a remote island (Juist) alive since the medieval times]. Ebs ................................................. Eberhard R. Hilf, Dr. Prof.; CEO (Geschaeftsfuehrer) Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg GmbH an der Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Ammerlaender Heerstr.121; D-26129 Oldenburg ISN-home: http://www.isn-oldenburg.de/ homepage: http://isn-oldenburg.de/~hilf email : h...@isn-oldenburg.de tel : +49-441-798-2884 fax : +49-441-798-5851 On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, ?iso-8859-1?Q?Hugo_Fjelsted_Alr=F8e?= wrote: > Stevan Harnad wrote: > > Those are all OAI-compliant archives, and they include both central, > > discipline-based archives and distributed institutional archives. With > > OAI-interoperability, it doesn't matter which kind of OAI archive a > > paper is in, but I am promoting university archives > > http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#institution-facilitate-filling > > http://www.eprints.org/ > > rather than central ones (even though I founded a central one myself > > http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ ) because researchers' > > institutions (and > > their research funders) all share in the joint > > publish-or-perish interests > > (and rewards) of maximizing the impact of their research > > output. Central > > repositories and disciplines do not. (They are the common locus for > > research that is competing for impact.) Hence research institutions > > (and their funders) are in a position to encourage, > > facilitate, and even > > mandate (through an extension of the publish-or-perish > > carrot-and-stick) > > open-access self-archiving of their own research output in > > their own OAI > > archive by their researchers, whereas disciplines and central > > organizations (e.g., WTO, WHO, UNESCO) are not: > > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html > > http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/ > > I think it is still too early to write off any of the possible paths to > open access within the field of self-archiving (not that you do that). I > see a potentially very fruitful role for community-building archives > that focus on certain research areas. These could be facilitated or > mandated by some of the specialized public research institutions that, > together with universities and private companies, inhabit the research > landscape. I think of research institutions oriented towards applied > research within for instance environmental research, agriculture, public > health, education, community development, etc. Here, there is a clear > two-sided research communication: towards the public and towards other > researchers in the field. Open access thus serves two communicative > purposes, improving scholarly communication and improving public access > to research results, besides the complementary purpose of institutional > self-promotion. > > By "community-building", I mean that such archives can contribute to the > creation or development of the identity of a scholarly community in > research areas that go across the established disciplinary matrix of the > university world. I have myself inititated an archive in research in > organic agriculture (http://orgprints.org), which we hope will become a > center for international communication and cooperation in this area. > Scientific papers from research in organic agriculture are published in > many different specialized disciplinary journals as well as in general > scientific journals and journals focused at organic agriculture, and it > is not easy for researchers to keep track of all that is being > published. > > I know the same thing can in principle be done with OAI-compliant > university archives and a "disciplinary hub" or "research area hub", and > in ten years time, we may not be able to tell the difference. But today, > it is still not quite the same thing. Contributing to the community > would be detached from the usage of what is there, since the depositing > of papers would take place somewhere outside the hub. This makes it > dependent on the widespread existence of university archives. So if one > wants to establish such an open-archive-based scholarly community hub, > the way to do it is to make an eprint archive with the scope that one > wants. > > > Having said that, it is still a historical fact that the first and > > still-biggest open-access OAI archive is a central, > > discipline-based one, > > the Physics Archive founded in 1991 http://arxiv.org/. But > > Arxiv's growth > > rate has been steadily linear since 1991, and shows no sign of either > > accelerating or generalizing to all the other disciplines. So clearly > > something else was needed to hasten the open-access era, and my own > > hunch is that a concerted policy university-based archiving was what > > was needed. > > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt> > > What's wrong with linear growth? It must be the SIZE of the growth rate > that is important. And how long it will take to realize some satisfying > level of open access with this growth rate. When you are looking for > exponential growth, I take it that you are looking for something that > MIGHT turn out to have a higher maximum growth rate than, for instance, > arXiv. And that is all well, but it might be exponential and still have > a slower maximum growth than the linear growth we see in arXiv. > > In the presentation that you refer to above, you write: > "At that rate, it would still take a decade before we reach the first > year that all physics papers for that year are openly accessible." > > I think that this is an impressive and very satisfying growth. And I > don't think that a decade is too long - the great news is that physics > is getting there! > > Kind regards > Hugo Alroe, archive administrator at http://orgprints.org >