Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives

From: Greg Kuperberg <greg_at_MATH.UCDAVIS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 11:57:11 -0800

On Sat, Feb 03, 2001 at 07:10:10PM +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> Well it seems to me that in my article (1) I recommend self-archiving to
> free the refereed research literature, and (2) I recommend self-archiving
> in distributed institutional OAI-compliant Archives to complement
> self-archiving in centralized OAI-compliant Archives.
>
> Now in recommending this, what exactly do you think I should add?

You don't just recommend institution-based archives, you hype them as
superior to discipline-based archives. You describe them as a "powerful
and natural complement" that you hope will "broaden and accelerate the
self-archiving literature". I think you should add, more clearly than
you have, that that part is only your opinion, and not that of the
physicists and others who have "shown the way".

> > > On-Line archives (apart from the Physics arXiv) are all but non-existent.
> >
> > That's not true at all. In mathematics alone the AMS has a list of 60+
> > department-based and research-institute-based archives,
>
> Perhaps I should have said interoperable OAI-compliant archives. And if
> they exist, that's splendid. I hope there will be many more.

This sounds like the Western leftists who insisted that China and the
Soviet Union didn't practice true Communism. If it is utterly irrelevant
that many of the mathematical archives are interoperable and DC-compliant,
why will making them interoperable and OAI-compliant make all the
difference? Granted, the OAI group may have made a better standard
than the Dublin Core. It's still insane to dismiss one as paganism and
embrace the other as gospel.
--
  /\  Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
 /  \
 \  / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
  \/  * All the math that's fit to e-print *
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Dec 10 2010 - 19:46:02 GMT