Advantages of OMA, the Open Marine Archive in Flanders
Articles freely available on line are more highly cited. For greater impact and faster scientific progress, authors and publishers should aim to make research easy to access.
From: Steve Laurence. Online or invisible. Nature, 411 (6837): 521.
[full text article]
For marine scientists
OMA makes up a central archive of all his/her work
OMA increases the diffusion of his/her work and increases its impact
OMA makes up a CV and a tool for reporting
...
For the marine research group of institute
OMA increases the visibility and the prestige of the research group or institute
OMA attracts researchers and students
...
For the marine research community
OMA gives a global access to Flanders marine research results
OMA assures the long-term repository of academic output
...
For the circulation of publications
Publications (papers, reports, theses etc.) are better accessible online
Publications are more cited
Publications are better dispersed
The information can be searched at all levels through databases
...
There is more than one added value!
Hit counts per publication is possible
Personalized output is possible
Citation analysis is possible
What are the disadvantages?
Working load
A higher administrative load
New systems should be learned
Continuous follow up by the researcher himself/herself
BUT: the marine library is the tool to organise and manage the system
What about quality control, the 'peer review'?
These systems keep functioning:authors keep publishing in peer-reviewed journals, but these papers are additionally deposited in the open archive repositories
Effects on the establishment of the publishers world?
Editors are sometimes payed by publishers: remains
Build up reputations within the current publishing system: remains
See the open-access-movement as ‘anti-publishers’ point of view is a myth: repositories are complementary to the products of publishers and do not have commercial objectives
For an overwiew of the most frequent myths on Open Access and their refutation.
