PDF《Impact for Higher Quality Research》

Brody &

Harnad 2004;

Hajjem et al. 2005;

Moed 2005b;

Eysenbach 2006;

Giles et al. 1998;

Kurtz &

Brody, 2006;

Norris et al. 2008;

Evans 2008;

Evans &

Reimer 2009). Hence OA is not just about public access rights or the general dissemination of knowledge: It is about increasing the impact and thereby the progress of research itself. A work'

s research impact is an indication of how much it contributes to further research by other scientists and scholars, how much it is used, applied and built upon (Brin &

Page 1998;

Garfield 1955, 1976, 1988;

Page et al. 1999). That is also why impact is valued, measured and rewarded in researcher performance assessement as well as in research funding (Harnad 2009). Self-archiving mandates Only about 15% of the 2.5 million articles published annually worldwide are being self- archived by their authors today (Bjork et al 2008;

Hajjem and al., 2005). Creating an Institutional Repository (IR) and encouraging faculty to self-archive their articles therein is a good first step, but that is not sufficient to raise the self-archiving rate appreciably above its current spontaneous self-selective baseline of 15% (Sale, 2006). Nor are mere requests or recommendations by researchers'

institutions or funders, encouraging them to self-archive, enough to raise this 15% figure appreciably, even when coupled with offers of help, rewards, incentives and offers to do the deposit on the author'

s behalf. In two international, multidisciplinary surveys, 95% of researchers reported that they would self- archive if (but only if) required to do so by their institutions or funders. (Eighty-one percent reported that, if it was required, they would deposit willingly;

14% said they would deposit reluctantly, and only 5% would not comply with the deposit requirement;

Swan 2006.) Subsequent studies on actual mandate compliance have gone on to confirm that researchers do indeed do as they reported they would, with mandated IRs generating deposit rates several times greater than the 15% self-selective baseline and well on the road toward 100% within about two years of adoption (Sale, 2006). Universities'

own IRs are the natural locus for the direct deposit of their own research output: Universities (and research institutions) are the universal providers of all research output, in all scientific and scholarly disciplines;

they accordingly have a direct interest in hosting, archiving, monitoring, measuring, managing, evaluating, and showcasing their own research output in their own IRs, as well as in maximizing its uptake, usage, and impact (Holmes &

Oppenheim 2001;

Oppenheim 1996;

. OA self-archiving mandates

4 hence add visibility and value at both the individual and institutional level (Swan &

Carr 2008). In 2002, The University of Southampton'

s School of Electronics &

Computer Science (ECS) became the first in the world to adopt an official self-archiving mandate. Since then, a growing number of departments, faculties and institutions worldwide (including Harvard, Stanford, and MIT) as well as research funders (including all seven UK Research Funding Councils, the US National Institutes of Health, and the European Research Council) have likewise adopted OA self-archiving mandates. Over

100 mandates had already been adopted and registered and charted in ROARMAP1 as of autumn 2009. In 2008, mindful of the benefits of mandating OA, the council of the European Universities Association (EUA)2 unanimously recommended that all European Universities should create IRs and mandate that all their research output should be deposited in them immediately upon publication (to be made OA as soon as possible thereafter). The EUA further recommended that these self-archiving mandates be extended to all research results arising from EU research project funding. A similar recommendation was made by EURAB (European Research Advisory Board). In the US, the FRPAA has proposed similar mandates for all research funded by the major US research funding agencies. Some studies, however, have suggested that the OA Advantage might just be a self- selection bias rather than a causal factor, with authors selectively tending to make higher- quality (hence more citeable) articles OA (Craig et al. 2007;