Re: Preserving publications

From: Linda Humphreys <L.J.Humphreys_at_bath.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:40:50 +0000

After a bit of digging I found the JISC study at:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/e-prints_report_final.pdf

Best wishes,
Linda

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 20:14:39 +0000 Steve Hitchcock
<sh94r_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote:

> Concerns have been expressed about preservation of eprints stored in
> institutional archives, e.g. see this JISC study
> Feasibility and requirements study on preservation of e-prints
> http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/e-prints_report_1-0.pdf
> which led to this paper in D-Lib
> The Digital Preservation of e-Prints
> http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september03/pinfield/09pinfield.html
>
> With regard to institutional eprints Stevan Harnad has noted:
> >There is a confusing and misleading emphasis on preservation. Yes,
> >of course it is good to preserve these self-archived materials, and
> >they can and will be preserved (ArXiv has been online and cumulating
> >continuously since 1991); but the substantive issue here is *access*
> >not preservation! The real preservation problem is for the publishers'
> >primary toll-access version, online and on-paper. These self-archived
> >eprints are merely *supplements* to that, publicly archived so as to
> >maximise access to them, right now. They are not *substitutes* for the
> >primary publishers' version. It is a mistake to overstress this
> >access supplement as if it were *the* primary preservation corpus.
>
> In this context there may be some interest in the announcement on Friday
> October 31 that the UK Government passed the Legal Deposit Act extending to
> digital publications. The actual Act is at
> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmbills/026/03026.1-6.html
> and the British Library press release is at
> http://www.bl.uk/cgi-bin/press.cgi?story=1382
>
> It is also worth noting the comments of Anthony Watkinson, a publisher with
> experience of these processes:
>
> >It is probable that the statutory
> >instruments next year will start with off-line but on-line will follow quite
> >soon and (although web-site sampling is part of the picture) it is scholarly
> >e-journals that are of main interest i.e. publications. To my mind e-only
> >journals are the most important though the normative e-version of journals
> >available in print also are diverging from print and thus become more
> >important to preserve.
>
> There are still some practical issues to resolve, not least because the
> Government department involved only revealed the draft very late in the day
> "to the fury and exasperation of the library and publishing sectors",
> relating to omissions in earlier readings
> http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:iFKXGxJB6NcJ:www.alpsp.org/news/LegDep15-6-03.pdf+uk+legal+deposit+act&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
>
> But the thrust of the bill towards publications is clear.
>
> Steve Hitchcock
> IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
> University of Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
> Email: sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865

----------------------
Linda Humphreys
Science Faculty Librarian
University of Bath
Claverton Down
Bath BA2 7AY
L.J.Humphreys_at_bath.ac.uk
01225 385248
Received on Wed Nov 12 2003 - 12:40:50 GMT

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