UNESCO/ICSU meeting on Open Access

Electronic Data Archiving and Access D.G. Law, King’s College London

Thus far the only serious archiving of research materials has been undertaken by the research community - in some cases going back thirty years. There is thus much experience of both ownership costs, usage rates and the need to upgrade against changes in media, hardware and standards (futureproofing).

It is reasonably clear that such storage is required for research and scholarship, yet it is unlikely to be commercially economic. There is now much research showing that the requests for second and subsequent borrowing of an individual article are very close to zero. It may also be assumed that “futureproofing” against standards and media changes are essential but expensive. At present data is typically leased rather than purchased from commercial companies and so there is an emerging problem whose effects will not be felt until commercially controlled data ceases to offer a commercial return.

If there is little commercial value in such material, commercial companies, will, almost by definition, choose not to be involved in the process. It becomes essential then that some kind of depository status is available to “out-of-print” electronic material. The intellectual property rights in much modern science now rests in private hands and we run the risk that without archiving and public good structures, access will be restricted for commercial or dogmatic reasons or through technical incompetence or through unrealistic telecommunications costs. Although bandwidth will be available, it will not necessarily be cheap and the whole issue of network topology, of mirror sites and of caching requires serious investigation.

Legal deposit is one answer and yet it seems infeasible to place such costs on the national libraries who are unlikely to be able to bear the cost burden. Should the learned societies be emerging with a not-for profit role in this area? Revivifying the concept of the university press in an electronic form may also be attractive.

The model proposed in the accompanying paper [will this be published?] seems very traditional and takes little account of emerging changes in scholarly communication. Is a new class of intermediary required?

Archiving is a significant issue. If we assume that if it is to serve the academic community, but that it is unlikely to be commercially attractive, it seems reasonable to assume that the not for profit bodies such as scientific unions have a critical role to play. Archiving standards are badly needed. International organizations may have a role in regard to arranging guaranteed access to less heavily used material.