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Institutional Repositories and Scholarly CommunicationBenefits of Institutional Repositories
Scholarly Communication in a Digital AgeLibraries have a long tradition of providing information to all who seek it. Chalmer Davee Library is no exception to this tradition. The Library prides itself on providing all its patrons with current, relevant information for inquiry and research. Currently, however, there is a wealth of scholarly research and information that is lost or hidden from view. This information appears in electronic format, in journals that the Library lacks access to, or consists of information that exists only on discs or on the computers of the University's students, staff and faculty. Comprised of a variety of formats and topics from power point presentations at a regional conference to research posters, senior research papers or scholarly articles posted on a department's web page or published by a commercial vendor, this information cannot be gathered in one place to be disseminated to a world wide audience. MINDS@UW-River Falls is designed to fill the void by providing a collective site to gather, preserve and distribute the intellectual output of the University. Institutional Repositories like MINDS@UW-River Falls are just part of the discussion on the changing aspects of Scholarly Communication today. As journal subscriptions increase in price, Libraries around the country are faced with the tough decisions to reduce journal subscriptions. In addition, publishers restrictions on self-archiving, that is posting a copy of an article online in an Institutional Repository or Departmental web page, reduce the flow of scholarly communication by restricting access to those who can afford to purchase the journals. In essence, this signals a decrease in access to information on which future ideas and research can be built. So what can be done? Besides placing information in an Institutional Repostitory, the Open Access movement provides an alternative to the high costs of traditional publishing. Open access means that information is freely available on the Internet. Some places have even created open access journals in which all articles are made freely available to a world wide audience. Some of the journals even have an editorial process in which the articles are peer-reviewed just like they would be in a traditional print publication. For a list of Open Access Journals, check out the Directory of Open Access Journals at: http://www.doaj.org/. Other Institutions, like Harvard Law School, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Stanford University School of Education are moving towards creating their own open access repositories that make their faculty's scholarly articles available worldwide for free. Moveover, there have been several recent legislative acts to make information freely available online, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Acces Policy and the Federal Research Public Access Act. The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. There is also the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA) which would require that a11 U.S. government agencies with annual extramural research expenditures over $100 million make manuscripts of journal articles stemming from research funded by that agency publicly available via the Internet. The manuscripts will be maintained and preserved in a digital archive maintained by the agency or in another suitable repository that permits free public access, interoperability, and long-term preservation. Each manuscript will be freely available to users without charge within six months after it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The future of scholarly communication is uncertain, and the Library encourages you to discuss the ideas with your colleagues, fellow staff members and students to address the problems facing scholarly communication today. For more information on Open Access, Scholarly Communication and Institutional Repositories, please see the links below.
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University of Wisconsin–River Falls |