Institutional Repositories - 0915 David Moorman SSHRC

CARL Institutional Repositories: The Next Generation, an Access 2006 preconference
Tuesday October 10, 2006
09:15 David Moorman, SSHRC

mention of OECD policy on publically-funded research

research communication

SSHRC has embraced OA in principle,
but a big challenge going from principle to action

a lot of politics - institutional, municipal, up to international

support for research journals
the role of the article as a unit in IR
knowledged mobilization - make publically-funded research available

UManitoba data project

indicators of research impact
how can we prove/demonstrate that the investment in research is producing value?

* Does SSHRC have a policy?

No.

There is more to this than just mandating OA.

Currently: Embrace in principle.  Work out the details.  Promotional approach.
           Figure out how to support OA journals.  Conducting experiments to figure out best approach.

SSHRC vs. CARL: SSHRC is not institution-focused

challenge due to Canadian structure of provincial jurisdiction over education

there is still a limited adoption of IRs in Canadian universities

* What can CARL do?

build on other efforts
- look at University of California system
- EU - 7th framework programme (DRIVER project) - look at Montreal meeting - CANARIE -
  10 universities in 8 countries - European Research Area
- Public Knowledge Project

challenge: cultural, social, institutional barriers to real advancement
           SSHRC community has both highly conservative and very innovative members

Jean-Pierre Cote, University of Montreal - using longitudinal data sets at Research Data Centres
                                           1000 researchers/day using the RDCs
                                           surprise
                                           but opportunity

                                           set up IR that is methodologically focussed
                                           all research from researchers using social statistics
                                           about 5000 articles/year

Creative Commons Canada - dealing with copyright issues

letters going out first to authors, then to publishers holding copyright

model agreement will go up on the home page on the RDCs

SSHRC Transformation - new Strategic Plan

SSHRC IR?
- no technical barrier

Treasury Board - transfer payments
                 contract or grant
                 grant can't have post-award conditions, e.g. can't require article deposit
                 auditor-general has said this should be fixed
                 will be a long time before this is worked out

Official Languages Act - websites must be in both languages
                         how to handle research?
                         15,000 objects would have to be translated every year
                         SSHRC has asked their lawyers (through Industry Canada) for an opinion
                         untranslated repository would be ok... until anyone complained

CISTI is in the same boat - as are all the federal government libraries

but SSHRC can support the CARL community
- haven't given money to libraries directly since early 90s

challenges: $300 million from Fed Gov goes to universities anyway (indirect costs)
            out of SSHRC budget - but demand for this money far exceeds supply - currently able
              to support 20 - 25% of research community (NSERC can support about 60%)

two routes:
- OA journals
- IRs

Moorman thinks IRs will start to take off

thinks Google and Yahoo will start to move this, particularly on digitization

===

Q: UMontreal project?  Expand to all DLI (Data Liberation Initiative) datasets?
A: DLI is a completely separate project, and a much larger task

Carl Jackman - UManitoba - data set repository - they are at the very beginning stages

UVic - new data librarian - science data - Earth and Ocean Sciences - data sets behind Masters and
PhD research - what to do?

Moorman - also NEPTUNE project

response rate on SSHRC mandate on data sets - terrible response - almost nothing archived

Alison Ball - Federal Government S&T community looking at Official Languages for research

Q: how to deal with official languages then?
A: slowly win the political battle

there is a big challenge with the cost recovery model - if you have to charge, people can't afford it,
and it doesn't align with OA principles - but this is another political battle

===

all postings from this workshop I will technotag with CIR2006

Comments

[Stevan Harnad]

SSHRC IS SPINNING ITS WHEELSStevan Harnad
Chaire de recherche du Canada en sciences cognitives Université du Québec à Montréal

"SSHRC has embraced OA in principle, but a big challenge going from principle to action"

Five out of the eight UK Research Councils (BBSRC, CCLRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC) seem to have managed it...

"Does SSHRC have a policy? No. There is more to this than just mandating OA."

Four out of the eight UK Research Councils (BBSRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC) seem to have managed to mandate it, and Canada's CIHR seems to have managed to propose a mandate...

"Figure out how to support OA journals. Conducting experiments to figure out best approach."

Why is SSHRC fussing about supporting OA journals instead of mandating the self-archiving of SSHRC research output?

"look at University of California system"

Why not look instead at a system with a mandate, hence one that works, as voluntarism, demonstrably, does not?

"SSHRC IR?"

What on earth for? Mandate that SSHRC fundees self-archive their SSHRC-funded research output in their own institutional IRs. SSHRC does not need a Central Repository (CR) of its own in the distributed, interoperable OAI age.

"Official Languages Act - websites must be in both languages how to handle research? 15,000 objects would have to be translated every year"

Such nonsense as to take your breath away: Can SSHRC not have a library? Are only bilingual or translated journals admissible? (Besides, SSHRC does not need a CR of its own: Just mandate self-archiving in the fundee's own institution's IR.)

"grant can't have post-award conditions, e.g. can't require article deposit"

Nonsense. If publishing the research in a peer-reviewed journal can be a grant fulfillment condition, so can self-archiving the article.

SSHRC is spinning its wheels, citing problems in principle while others are solving them in practice.

"SSHRC Open Access Consultation (Canada)" (Aug 2005)

Replies for SSHRC Consultation on Open Access (Nov 2005)

Canada's SSHRC lacks leader, hence leadership, on OA (May 2006)

Stevan Harnad