What is the difference between institutional and central Eprint Archives?
Because of OAI-compliance , it no longer matters whether documents are archived in one central Eprint Archive or in many distributed ones. They are all interoperable and harvestable into one virtual “central” archive in which all contents are seamlessly navigable and retrievable. Strategically, however, there is a difference between institutional and central self-archiving. Self-archiving is done in order to maximize the visibility and accessibility of refereed research, and hence to maximize its usage by researchers and its impact on research. The benefits of maximizing research impact are felt by the researcher and the researcher’s institution, rather than by some more central entity (such as the research discipline or learned society). The academic reward system (salaries, research funding) is centered on the researcher’s institution. Publishing and impact confer advantages on both researcher and institution. Hence the researcher’s institution is the natural one to host self-archivi
