I heard a real howler today. Seems the scholarly-communication czar at a Certain Research Institution quoted Roach Motel in a presentation and then said (my paraphrase) “Isn’t it nice that we don’t have those problems?”
This is me. Rolling. On the. Floor. Laughing. My. Nether regions. Off.
I dropped by their institutional repository. I won’t repeat the numbers I found there because the institution could be identified by them. They do have what looks to be a flourishing ETD program, but aside from that—all I can say is that “denial” is more than a river in Egypt. If their mission is the standard open-access notion of capturing the institution’s peer-reviewed output, they’re no better off than any of the rest of us, take my word for it.
I can’t speak to their faculty-participation levels without looking behind the public façade, and I don’t know anything about what arrangements may or may not be in place for mediated deposit. That’s one of the odd things about this business: high numbers mean success on some level, but it’s not at all clear which, as it may mean either an engaged faculty or a really with-it library.
Low numbers are low numbers, though. Their numbers aren’t extraordinarily low, but they’re low compared to the institution’s peer-reviewed output, and as is typical of IRs, a glance down the collections list demonstrates that a hefty chunk of their content isn’t peer-reviewed.
There’s no shame in that. It’s the boat most of us are in. I wrote Roach Motel partly as a bit of an apologia for that boat. But I’m sorry, it’s plain old bloody stupid to deny it… unless the institution has some other mission for the IR that they’re not letting on about.
This is possible. It’s one of the directions MPOW is going in for our IR (with my active connivance, I may say); if it won’t work for the peer-reviewed-literature wonks’ purposes, let’s see what it is good for. If this is the case for that institution, however, their actual site doesn’t so much as whisper it.
Which makes me think Czar Scholcomm’s comments really are an amazing case of ostrich-headed denial. Lordy, when is the green open-access business going to grow up?
