See also the AmSci thread:
"A Role for SPARC in Freeing the Refereed Literature"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0697.html
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2002 20:06:18 +0100
From: Rick Johnson <rick_at_arl.org>
Reply-To: bmanifesto_at_yahoogroups.com
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: SPARC paper on institutional repositories
For Immediate Release
July 29, 2002
For more information, contact:
Alison Buckholtz alison_at_arl.org
http://www.arl.org/sparc
SPARC WHITE PAPER ASSERTS INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES' CRITICAL ROLE
IN REFORMING SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION
Position paper outlines viability and long-term impact of
university-based digital collections which preserve faculty research,
scholarship
Washington, DC - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition) today released a major white paper, "The Case
for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper," which
examines the strategic roles institutional repositories serve for
colleges and universities. The paper asserts that institutional
repositories are a natural extension of an academic institution's
role as a generator of primary research, and envisions such
repositories as critical components in the evolving structure of
scholarly communication. It is available at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/ir.html and
http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/IR_Final_Release_102.pdf.
Institutional repositories -- digital collections that capture and
preserve the intellectual output of university communities -- answer
two challenges currently facing academic institutions. First,
institutional repositories reform scholarly communication by
stimulating innovation in a disaggregated publishing structure.
Second, they serve as tangible indicators of an institution's
quality, thus increasing its visibility, prestige, and public value.
SPARC's white paper describes institutional repositories' role as a
catalyst for change and explores their impact on major stakeholders
in the scholarly communication process. Stakeholders include
individual scholars and researchers, academic institutions and
librarians, scholarly and scientific society publishers, commercial
publishers, government institutions and others.
"A growing number of authors are already self-posting their work, and
institutional repositories channel and refine this trend, building a
stable, sustainable infrastructure to support global communication of
faculty research," said Herbert Van de Sompel, coordinator of Digital
Library Research at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory and co-founder of the Open Archives Initiative.
"Institutional repositories provide a logical component in a global
network of interoperable research repositories. Fundamental
components of the technical and standards infrastructure to support
the proliferation of such repositories are already in place today.
SPARC's white paper is an invaluable aid to institutions considering
concrete actions to optimize scholarly communication."
"Institutional repositories are a practical, cost-effective, and
strategic means for institutions to build partnerships with their
faculty to advance scholarly communication," said Rick Johnson, SPARC
Enterprise Director. "SPARC's paper guides higher education
administrators interested in learning why institutional repositories
make sense and how they affect key stakeholders. It demonstrates that
institutional repositories offer an immediate complement to the
existing scholarly publishing model while stimulating the emergence
of new structures that will evolve over time, offering expanded
benefits to institutions and scholars alike."
The white paper finds that the enabling technologies, standards, and
protocols to support institutional repositories already exist;
therefore, institutional repositories can be implemented immediately.
Moreover, colleges and universities need not act alone, because
library and institutional consortia will often provide economies of
scale for technical development and support.
Two upcoming workshops on institutional repositories may be of
interest to those considering implementation. For more information:
http://www.arl.org/sparc.
###
SPARC and SPARC Europe are coalitions of research universities and
libraries supporting increased competition in scholarly publishing.
Membership currently numbers approximately 240 institutions and
library consortia in North America, the U.K. and Europe, Australia,
New Zealand and Asia. SPARC is also affiliated with major library
organizations in Canada, the U.K. and Ireland, Denmark, Australia and
the USA. SPARC is located on the web at
http://www.arl.org/sparc;
SPARC Europe is located on the web at
http://www.sparceurope.org.
--
Rick Johnson, Enterprise Director
SPARC * The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition
21 Dupont Circle NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036 USA
Tel + 202 296 2296 x157 / Fax + 202 872 0884
E-mail rick_at_arl.org
Visit SPARC at: http://www.arl.org/sparc
http://www.sparceurope.org / http://www.createchange.org
Received on Mon Jul 29 2002 - 20:12:20 BST