Book Reviews
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007
![[Item Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/ur_bullet.gif){kind=small} There is no memory in research -- Comment()
Yes, IRs are broken. Let’s talk about it.: "Institutional repositories as a class are in serious trouble. They are not producing the outcomes they promised—or, indeed, much of any outcome in many cases. [...] Fundamentally, the value proposition on which IRs were sold to libraries was in error. Voluntary self-archiving in institutional repositories simply does not happen in the absence of deposit mandates. From a library perspective, this changes the picture from the original “build it, step back, and they will come” to “make a tremendous ongoing investment in marketing and library-mediated deposit services that may never pay off if other libraries at other institutions don’t do likewise.” It’s only sensible that many libraries back away from the latter commitment." [Caveat Lector] This is something I have been thinking about for some time. Much of the produced research data (and metadata) is never preserved, but there currently doesn't seem to be ways to fix this, even though decisionmakers in Finland and elsewhere have a lot of good will to make it happen. As things are, the society does not get as much value from investing in research as it should. Measurements are done again and again, data is seldom reused, and things have to be discovered again and again from scratch. Not good for the society, and not good for the researchers.
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