Here is a synopsis, based on the current data and trends, concerning: CENTRAL DISCIPLINE-BASED SELF-ARCHIVING versus DISTRIBUTED INSTITUTION-BASED SELF-ARCHIVING:
(1) The number of articles in the biggest of the central archives, which have been around for some time, is growing at an unchanging linear rate that is far too slow. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0043.gif (2) The number of articles in individual institutional archives -- *when they have institutional self-archiving policies* http://software.eprints.org/handbook/departments.php -- is growing faster than any central archive. http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php (3) There are few central archives, their number is growing very slowly, and it requires far more concerted action to create new ones. (4) There are many institutional archives, their numbers are growing fast, and it takes only a little local action to create new ones. http://software.eprints.org/handbook/managing-background.php (5) There is a centralized funding and upkeep problem with centralized archives, and often no persistent "entity" to ensure they keep going. (6) With institutional archives the costs are distributed across the universities, and each university is a persistent entity. (*7) There is no entity behind a centralized archive to mandate and monitor their filling, nor is there any shared interest between the author and the archive in the enhanced impact that motivates authors to self-archive. (*8) The author's institution is in a position to create institutional archives and to mandate and monitor their filling (with an institutional policy of OA provision), and there is a strong shared interest between the author and the archive in the enhanced impact that motivates authors to self-archive. http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php (9) Although 80% of journals have already given their green light to author self-archiving, many of them are still reluctant to sanction archiving in 3rd-party archives (i.e., other than those of the author's institution or publisher) for fear of sanctioning cut-rate 3rd-party publisher-rivals. (The fear is ungrounded for many reasons, but it is there as a further retardant on central archiving.) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html (10) OAI-compliance has made all OAI archives -- central and institutional -- equivalent, interoperable, jointly harvestable and searchable. The most important points are *7 and *8: Swan & Brown (2004) "asked authors to say how they would feel if their employer or funding body required them to deposit copies of their published articles in... repositories. The vast majority... said they would do so willingly." Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey Report. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3628.html Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) Authors and open access publishing. Learned Publishing 2004:17(3) 219-224. I am pretty sure that many of the misplaced expectations for central archives (rather like the misplaced expectations for OA Journals) are simply based on a misunderstanding of the nature of OA, the motivation for OA, and the fastest and surest means of providing OA. All means are welcome, but please, let us invest our efforts in proportion to their power and probability of success, based on the available evidence and reason, and not on the basis of preconceptions (which are almost always papyrocentric in unconscious ways, and often obsolete) or abstract speculations. Pertinent Prior Amsci Forum Topic-Threads: "Central vs. Distributed Archives" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0293.html "Central versus institutional self-archiving" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3206.html "Association for Computer Machinery Copyright/Self-Archiving Policy" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1944.html "Open Letter to Philip Campbell, Editor, Nature" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2601.html "Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0497.html "Elsevier Science Policy on Public Web Archiving Needs Re-Thinking" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2071.html "Elsevier Gives Authors Green Light for Open Access Self-Archiving" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3770.html "Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2549.html "University policy mandating self-archiving of research output" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3438.html Stevan Harnad