repositories for the rest of us: New Metadata Journal & OA

2007/06/29: New Metadata Journal & OA

Haworth recently announced the new Journal of Library Metadata.

I feel a bit irritated every time a new LIS journal arrives on the scene which doesn't let authors retain full copyright. Haworth, to it's credit, is a SHERPA/RoMEO "green publisher," meaning that authors can archive pre-prints and post-prints of the work if they meet certain conditions. In the case of Haworth, those conditions include: the archiving must be on the author's website or author's institutional web site,there should be notice of the publisher's copyright and citation pointing readers to the published version of the article, and the server upon which pre/post print is archived must be non-profit.

Sounds OK. Articles from this new journal will be available, in some form, as Open Access so why am I irritated? I'm not fond of Haworth's copyright transfer agreement. Authors transfer full copyright to Haworth and retain limited rights of re-use rather than authors retaining their copyright and licensing publication privileges to Haworth.

As a long term strategy, it's not optimal. Authors don't need to sign away full rights to publishers and they shouldn't. It's a nit-picky thing for me. Publishers need permission to make the article available, to archive it/re-purpose to different formats when necessary, etc. It's great that the publishers allow authors to retain rights. I just think that in the very long term, it's not a good practice to let the publishers have it all just because they let authors keep a manifestation of a work on their own server to do what they will.

It's really a question of how much one trusts publishers to share any profit they may make from your work in the long term.

At least the individual subscription price for the Journal of Library Metadata is a reasonable $48. I still chafe at any type of reader fee for metadata research, given the interoperability issues that face the metadata community. Less affluent libraries should be able to access the research up-front without relying on the individual vagaries of personal archiving practice. Just because Haworth allows authors to archive their articles, doesn't mean that those authors will archive those articles.

Under currant practice, the only guaranteed, timely, access to the "published" work is via the journal. When there are barriers to that journal, it doesn't serve the LIS community. It's not an easy black/white issue. It does cost money to review and produce the final article and the journal publishers are providing a service. Somebody needs to foot the bill.

We cannot develop new economic models, however, if we continue, as a profession, to support the status quo. I haven't decided yet if I'll read the new journal or write for it. Depends on the content, I suppose. I'm inclined to avoid it, however, and continue patronizing freely available OA journals instead.

Labels: metadata, open access