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Versions of academic papers and open access : attitudes and current practice among economics researchers Frances Shipsey, VERSIONS Project, Library, London School of Economics and Political Science Open Scholarship Conference, University of Glasgow, 20 October 2006. Outline.
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Versions of academic papers and open access : attitudes and current practice among economics researchers Frances Shipsey, VERSIONS Project, Library, London School of Economics and Political Science Open Scholarship Conference, University of Glasgow, 20 October 2006
Outline • The versions problem and an illustration • Recent projects and initiatives addressing versions • Some results from the VERSIONS Project user requirements study • Examples of good practice
What questions are there relating to versions? • Identity • Provenance • Trust • Discovery • User needs – best version(s) • IPR • and more …
‘The processes of authorship, which often involve a series of drafts that are circulated to various people, produce different versions which in an electronic environment can easily go into broad circulation; if each draft is not carefully labeled and dated it is difficult to tell which draft one is looking at or whether one has the “final” version of a work.’ Clifford Lynch, “Accessibility and Integrity of Networked Information Collections”, Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States, August 1993, p68. http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS30119
Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Ireland and X Communications
FRBR – a hierarchical model • Work – expression – manifestation - item • ‘On a practical level, the degree to which bibliographic distinctions are made between variant expressions of a work will depend to some extent on the nature of the work itself, and on the anticipated needs of users.’ Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report. IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Approved by the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing. K.G.Saur, München 1998 UBCIM Publications – New Series Vol 19. http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf
RIVER – Scoping Study on Repository Version Identification (RIVER) • Rightscom Ltd and partners London School of Economics and Political Science Library, University of Oxford Computing Services, March 2006. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/RIVER%20Final%20Report.pdf • Defined two broad classes of requirement for version identification: • Collocation • Disambiguation • ‘Identifying that two digital objects which happen to share certain attributes […] have no contextually meaningful relationship’ • ‘Understanding the meaning of the relationship between two digital objects where one exists [without inspecting and comparing the objects themselves]’
JISC Eprints Application Profile Working Group • Carried out within JISC Digital Repositories Programme • Approach based on FRBR and the DCMI Abstract Model • Provides more detail and structure than simple Dublin Core • Deals with versions very well • Work carried out June-August 2006 http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile
NISO/ALPSP Working Group on Versions of Journal Articles • Publisher-led group, with larger review group made up of publishers, librarians and other stakeholders • Draft documents including Terms and Definitions for versions (March 2006) • Author’s Original • Accepted Manuscript • Proof • Version of Record • Updated Version of Record http://www.niso.org/committees/Journal_versioning/JournalVer_comm.html
The VERSIONS Project • VERSIONS : Versions of Eprints – user Requirements Study and Investigation of the Need for Standards • Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) under the Digital Repositories Programme • London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) - lead partner • Nereus – consortium of European research libraries specialising in economics – associate partner • Runs from July 2005 to February 2007 • www.lse.ac.uk/versions
The Library of the London School of Economics - www.lse.ac.uk/library
Nereus – a network of European economics research libraries www.nereus4economics.info
Economists Online – a pilot search service - http://nereus.uvt.nl/eo
Focus on economics • Known preprint culture – working papers and use of RePEc archive • Sue Sparks report on disciplinary differences: • ‘What is the single most essential resource you use, the one that you would be lost without?’ Economists responded: • 18.2% preprints • 9.1% postprints • 54.5% journal articles • 18.2% datasets Sue Sparks. JISC Disciplinary Differences Report. Rightscom Ltd, August 2005. Appendix C, Table 43. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/Disciplinary%20Differences%20and%20Needs.doc
Versions Project – user requirements study 2006 • Online survey ‘Versions of academic papers online - the experience of authors and readers’, conducted May-July 2006 • 464 responses from academic researchers • 76% of researcher respondents from economics and econometrics • 24% professors, 33% lecturer/associate professors, 15% post-doc researchers, 23% research students • Good geographic spread of responses • 133 responses from stakeholders – separate survey
VERSIONS Survey researcher respondents • Research active – 50% wrote 4 or more papers in past 2 years • Very active in disseminating through different research outputs, eg working papers, conference papers/presentations, book chapters, journal articles) – 59% typically produce 4 or more different types of research output from a research project, 33% produce 5 or more types of output • Wide range of dissemination channels used – personal or institutional website, RePEc, SSRN, etc • Create and keep many personal copies of revisions
Depositing final author version if invited Key Perspectives survey of researchers in 2005 asked about author intentions regarding mandatory deposit: 81% said they would comply willingly. Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown. Open Access Self-Archiving: An Author Study (Sponsored by JISC). Key Perspectives, 2005.
EPrints repositories – latest version http://cogprints.org/615/
What is needed? • Improved metadata allowing for relationships and links to be established – Eprints Application Profile, FRBR • Comparing content of versions – open formats, eg XML • Clear identification of publisher version and differentiation between other versions • Repository software should implement version control mechanisms (Fedora already includes this) • Author awareness about version management – institutional support for management of authoring process, through version control systems, eg Subversion, CVS • More versioning information in the digital object itself
www.lse.ac.uk/versions Frances Shipsey: f.m.shipsey@lse.ac.uk