Repositories: Researcher Perspective

Martin Fenner

Department of Hematology, Hemostaseology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation

Gargouri 2010. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013636

Do researchers self-archive? Mandated vs. self-selected

Do we need mandates?

Why do we publish our work?

© Alma Swan 2006 53

Chapter 7: The culture of Open Access: researchers’ views and responses

Alma Swan

The last couple of years have seen the acceptance of Open Access (OA) as a desirable goal by institutions, research funders, libraries and some publishers, to the point that action has been taken by these parties towards achieving it. Scholars themselves, however, have proved somewhat harder to prod into action. Once they understand the aims of Open Access they generally identify with the concept, unsurprising since it is scholars themselves who stand to benefit most from its inception. Nevertheless, in general scholars have been slow to act in ways that bring Open Access about, a significant retardant to progress for Open Access since its implementation is largely in the hands of the research community itself. What is behind this?

Before that question can be answered, it is instructive to revisit once more the primary motivations of researchers with respect to publishing their work. Why do they publish at all? We feel we understand the answer to that one: it is largely because if they do not publish, their work remains obscure and their life’s toils are as worthless. On a more mundane note, they publish because it is the overt expression of their effort and because it offers a way of measuring, albeit fairly crudely, their ‘worth’. Finally, they publish because it is expected of them, by their employers and by the bodies that fund them.

If their motives are examined more closely, though, scholars provide further clarification on this point. Figure 1 shows the proportions of authors in the respondent pool from one of our author surveys who gave a ‘very important’ classification to various reasons for publishing the results of their work (Swan and Brown, 2005). Several reasons are considered very important but the one that comes out top is to communicate my results to my peers. Researchers consider it a top priority to report their results to their peer community so that others can read and build upon them. They wish to make an impact.

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[Insert Figure 7.1]

Figure 7.1: Researchers’ reasons for publishing their workSwan 2006. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12428/

Should we all become RoMEOs?

Can we easily search repositories?

Kim 2006. doi: 10.1002/meet.1450420173

Peter Murray-Rust

ILI2009: Why scientists can't search institutional Repositories

http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=2125

Can we easily search across institutional repositories?

Shouldn‘t we rather search disciplinary respositories?

Preprint and/or postprint?

Are repositories

silos?

Are repositories linked to institutional bibliographies?

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Are repositories linked to journals?

Are repositories integrated in application platforms?

Are repositories

social?

Dorothea Salo

This disconnect (from scientists) is the number-one threat to science librarianship today.

Are librarians and researchers talking to each other?

August 3, 2010

Too Many Researchers Are Reluctant to Share Their DataBy Felicia LeClere

And what about data?

Will we see the same discussion all over again?

Some suggestions

Better integration tools

Identifiers for researchers and their contributions

VIVO is a resource that provides information about:

• people• departments• facilities• courses• grants• publications

vivoweb.org

Cameron Neylon

Beyond the Impact Factor: Linking funder needs to the development of new research metrics

New ideas on how to evaluate researchers

Involve researchers at every step

http://www.flickr.com/photos/babycreative/3654840791/http://www.flickr.com/photos/hildeengwenverbouwen/4743936514/http://www.flickr.com/photos/runesteiness/4983827599/http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoomzoom/304135268/http://www.slideshare.net/ORCID/cerninspire-perspective-on-orcidhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/msiebuhr/987572658/http://scienceblogs.com/bookoftrogool/2010/01/science_online_2010_scientists.phphttp://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~5~5~24355~127738:Original-Members-of-GIRDhttp://cameronneylon.net/blog/three-minutes-of-audio-hacking-research-reputation/

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