[ The following text is in the "WINDOWS-1252" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]
Sally - can you post the article, please? I would like to review and possibly comment on the methodology, but first I need to see the paper. You refer to chaotic proliferation of versions as being an issue for authors, yet your own behavior suggests a high comfort level with just such a chaotic proliferation of versions. From my perspective, an unrefereed preprint would be a vast improvement to these self-selected snippets of this so-far unpublished study you have posted to this list over the past few months. As Stevan frequently points out, there are a great many things that faculty have to do at universities, because there are rules saying that they must. For example, to be considered for tenure & promotion, it is necessary to go through an application and review process. This is quite a bit more work than self-archiving! If it were possible to obtain tenure & promotion without the bother of the paperwork, WOULD faculty bother? Sally does have a good point about faculty just not understanding, in my opinion. I don't think any of us, not even the most ardent of archivangelists, have yet fully appreciated the full potential of the IR. For example, in some cases an IR mandate will immediately DECREASE a faculty member's workload by much more than is created by the few keystrokes it takes to self-archive. How so? Currently, faculty members do need to report on their publications and other activities; multiple reporting is common. There may be one report for the department, another for the tenure and promotion committee, still others for research funding agencies, plus the faculty member's own website, of course. When the IR mandates says that all publications must be self-archived in the IR because this is where the university will look for their work (tenure and promotion committee, departmental reports), this means that those few self-archiving keystrokes can save hours of administrative work down the line for faculty. Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library. Heather Morrison, MLIS The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com On 13-Mar-09, at 2:33 AM, Sally Morris wrote: Author apathy (or actual unease) about self-archiving is certainly what Sue Thorn and I found in our recent study (to be published in Learned Publishing in July). Extract from abstract follows: ?? less than half knew what self-archiving was; 36% thought it was a good idea and 50% were unsure. Just under half said they used repositories of self-archived articles, but 13% of references were not in fact to self-archiving repositories. 29% said they self-archived their own articles, but 10% of references were not to publicly accessible sites of any kind. The access and convenience of self-archiving repositories were seen as positive, but there were concerns about quality control, workload for authors and institutions, chaotic proliferation of versions, and potential damage to existing journals, publishers and societies.? I don?t believe that saying you would do something if you were obliged to do so is the same as actually wanting it (or even necessarily understanding it) Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK