Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
like reference linking, and revision or correction in response to the peer-
review or production processes.
Three issues need to be addressed if manuscript archiving is to be
successful:
Utilization by authors
The vast majority of journals allow their authors to do some form of
self-archiving, on their own personal websites, in repositories run by
their institution, in subject repositories for their discipline or a
combination of these (Morris, 2009). Despite this, the take-up by
authors has been low (Lawal, 2002; Rowlands and Nicholas, 2005;
Davis and Connolly, 2007); voluntary manuscript archiving is
estimated at 5-6% (Fowler, 2007). Several funding organizations
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and research institutions have now introduced mandates requiring
authors to deposit, which, combined with publishers depositing on
behalf of authors, have improved deposit levels. The Wellcome Trust
reports a compliance level of around 40% (Kiley, 2009), while for
the National Institutes of Health compliance has increased from
around 5% to circa 70% since its mandate became compulsory.
Nonetheless, levels of self-archiving generally remain low.
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Reliance on journals for authority and certification
Material posted in online repositories currently relies on journal
title or publisher brands for authority and certification. The major
concern for publishers operating a subscription model is that
widespread self-archiving will cause libraries to cancel their
subscriptions. Despite anecdotal survey evidence (Ware, 2006),
there is no empirical evidence attributing widespread subscription
cancellations to manuscript archiving. The jury is still out, but it
seems inconceivable that libraries will continue to subscribe to
content that is also freely available on the web, so long as there is a
high degree of confidence that it will continue to be available into
the future. With budgets under constant pressure, what
responsible librarian would? Of course, if self-archiving is
complementary to subscription journals, then it comes at an
additional cost in terms of the architecture and infrastructure of
the repositories, in the cost of curation and preservation, and in the
time of academics for archiving.
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Version control
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