Maximizing university research impact through self-archiving

Abstract:

(1) Universities need to adopt a self-archiving policy -- an extension of their existing "publish or perish" policy to "publish with maximal impact". A potential model for such a policy can be found at http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html along with (free) software for creating a standardized online university CV, linking all entries for peer-reviewed articles to their full text self-archived in the university eprint archives: http://paracite.eprints.org/cgi-bin/rae_front.cgi

(2) University libraries need to help with the first wave of self-archiving, doing "proxy" self-archiving for those researchers who feel too old, tired, or busy to do the few keystrokes per paper that are involved. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#7.3

(3) Research funding agencies such as NSF or NIH (US), HEFCE or EPSRC (UK), NSERC, CFI or FRSQ (Canada), or CNRS or INSERM (France) need to encourage self-archiving as part of the normal research cycle, requiring not only that the research findings be published, as they already require, but that their visibility and usage be maximized by making them openly accessible through self-archiving. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/

(4) Scientometric performance indicators and analyzers such as http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/search -- rather like google, but based on citation links instead of ordinary links -- need to be created and used to demonstrate, monitor, measure, evaluate and reward the maximization of research impact through open access. Free online accessibility increases citation impact by 336% http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/

(5) Journals need to support self-archiving by modifying their copyright transfer or licensing agreements to encourage self-archiving (as 55% of them already do, with most others agreeing on a per-paper basis if asked: so ask!): http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/
romeo/Romeo%Publisher%Policies.htm

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