In Europe, a Collaborative Effort Will Gather Data on Research and Repositories

-- Library Journal, 10/14/2008 1:43:00 PM

There is at least one thing that open access advocates, researchers, and publishers and libraries in Europe can agree on—that more study on the complex issues raised by institutional repositories is needed. This week European stakeholders supported by the European Union—including the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM); the European Science Foundation; Gottingen State and University Library; and the Max Planck Society—will collaborate on an effort to investigate “the effects of the large-scale, systematic deposit of authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research.” 

The project, dubbed PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) will collect data from 2008 to 2011, by setting up an “observatory” designed to monitor the effects of systematic archiving over time. The research will address issues including: 

• How large-scale archiving will affect journal viability
• Whether such archiving increases access
• How such practices affect the broader ecology of European research
• What factors influence the readiness to deposit in repositories and potential cost
• How traditional publishing systems can coexist with self-archiving.

 While stakeholders agree that peer-reviewed literature play a key role in scholarly communication, different views abound on how emerging practices will affect research, ranging from the wisdom of mandated deposit in open access repositories to embargo periods. Michael Mabe, CEO of trade publishing group STM and Chair of the PEER executive committee, said the venture would create a better understanding of journal and repository use, and would “do much to foster trust and mutual understanding between the stakeholders in academic research and scholarly publishing.”

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