The Southampton implementation of the successful Netherlands “Cream of Science”
should many aspects of the method used by the Netherlands, but with a few
modifications and upgrades.
1. Objective:
(1) to showcase the research in each department of the university,
(2) to demonstrate the power and benefits of e-prints soton, and to
(3) provide an incentive to all U. Southampton authors to comply with the
mandate to deposit all their postprints in eprints soton
2. Name:
The first suggestion is not to call it “cream of science,” because we want it to cover
all of scholarly research output at Southampton. “Science” should be replaced by
“research” or “scholarship”. (In Dutch and French, “science” is covers all of
scholarship, but in English it implies only the physical, biological and social
sciences.)
The second suggestion is perhaps not to use “cream,” because it implies that what
has not yet been deposited is of lesser quality. (Even if it is true, it’s best not to
stress that, as otherwise it is a deterrent to the authors who are not chosen for the
“cream.”
Here are a few candidate names:
e-Spotlight Soton (or Spotlight Soton)
e-Showcase Soton (or Showcase Soton)
e-View Soton (or Preview Soton)
e-Vanguard Soton (or Vanguard Soton)
Excellence Soton
For the rest of this document I will use “e-S” as the stand-in for whatever we decide
to call Soton’s version of “Cream of Science”
3. Selection/Recruiting of Authors and Content for e-S:
This is delicate because we need to select the 4-5 most important and productive
authors in each department, but without really saying so, as that would offend and
even discourage those who are not selected. The psychological advantage we must
use is the fact that most authors are not yet depositing in compliance with the
mandate, and that remedying that is in part what this is about, and for. E-S is
intended to showcase the university’s research excellence in each department, as all
of e-prints soton itself is eventually intended to do.
Some judgment should be made as to who are the half dozen top authors in each
department. If they happen to already be among those among the few who have
already deposited some or all of their papers, that is splendid. If not, we should offer
them a proxy archiving services that will deposit the full texts of all their current
articles as well as their past articles.
(I don’t think we should imitate Netherlands too literally here in trying to recover all
their retrospective articles. We should deposit all current and forthcoming articles
plus whatever is available from the past, either as digital files, or journal downloads,
plus the dozen or so most important of the past papers, which can be scanned and
OCR’d if not available. I also think that proxy archiving on their behalf should be
offered as an option, but that they should first be asked to arrange for deposit
themselves, if possible, and if they are willing to commit to doing it within a
specified, short time interval: I suggest 6 weeks.)
The metadata for all authors for their 4 RAE 2008 submissions should already be in
e-prints soton (are they not?), so that would be the starting point: For the 5 e-S
authors in each department, the full-texts would be added to those 4, plus the fulltexts and metadata for all current and forthcoming articles, plus the full-text and
metadat for whatever restrospective articles are available, but at least the dozen
most important ones.
4. Copyright:
There is no copyright issue. All full-texts are deposited. For current and forthcoming
articles, the author’s peer-reviewed, accepted final draft is preferable to the
publisher’s PDF (fewer restrictions). For retrospective deposits where the author no
longer has the digital draft, the downloaded PDF from the publisher’s site is fine, or
the scanned OCR PDF. Before 1997 there were no restrictions on electronic accessprovision, so access to all those deposits can be set as Open Access. Access to about
63% of recent, current and forthcoming deposits can likewise be set immediately as
Open Access. For any other case, access to the full-text can be set as Closed Access.
(The metadata are still visible to all, and e-prints soton’s “request-a-copy” Button
will provide “Almost Open Access” semi-automatically to all individual requesters as
soon as the author authorizes with one click upon receiving the automatic request.)
It makes no difference for our e-S if some of the deposits are Almost-OA rather than
OA.
5. Books:
Extremely important for a number of reasons is the question of books: Most authors
will not wish to deposit the full-texts of their books (although they are of course
welcome, whether deposited as Open Access or Closed Access). However, all authors
must deposit their book metadata and their book’s reference list (cited references,
bibliography). (The books’ reference lists will eventually allow book citation metrics
to be added to the impact metrics that will be displayed and showcased for all
authors.) Including book metadata in the e-S is crucial for involving the disciplines
(esp. the humanities and some social sciences) that are more book-based than
article-based.
6. Requisite Resources:
The resources needed to create e-S are:
(1) Liaisons with each department to choose their top 5 authors, to ensure that
CVs plus all available digital files are provided, and to assure that all those of
the authors who are willing to deposit their works within the 6-week interval
actually do it.
(2) Proxy depositors to deposit all the rest of the work that the selected authors
will not be depositing themselves (current and forthcoming postprints,
retrospective articles, including at least the 12 most important), plus
metadata and reference lists for all books, present and past (bibliographies
may have to be OCR’d), using each author’s CV and available digital files.
(3) Design of web page showcasing the departments, their authors, their works,
and their metrics, along the lines of what the Dutch Cream of Science did:
7. Implementing e-S:
Once the contents are deposited, for the actual implementation of e-S we can follow
and elaborate on the Dutch Cream of Science model, as described in these articles -http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/vanderkuil/ and
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw64/mettrop.html and as
described by surf/dare:
http://www.surffoundation.nl/smartsite.dws?ch=ENG&id=13778
Leo Waaijers, the award-winning designer of Cream of Science has kindly agreed to
give us advice if we need it:
http://www.surf.nl/en/SURFActueel/Pages/SPARCEuropeAward2008.aspx