On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Charles W. Bailey, Jr. wrote:

> DSpace has a broader scope than just eprints; however
> some cost data is available...
>
> Barton, Mary R., and Julie Harford  Walker.  "Building a
> Business Plan for DSpace, MIT Libraries' Digital Institutional
> Repository"  Journal of Digital Information   4(2) (2003)
> (http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i02/Barton/). -
>
> ...the authors conservatively estimate a budget of $285,000 for
> FY 2003. The bulk of the costs are for staff ($225,000), with
> smaller allocations for operating expenses ($25,000) and system
> hardware expansion ($35,000). MIT's DSpace service offerings have
> two components: core services (basic repository functions) and
> premium services (e.g., digitization and e-format conversion,
> metadata support, expanded user storage space, and user alerts and
> reports). While core services are free, MIT reserves the right to
> potentially charge for premium services. For further information
> (http://libraries.mit.edu/dspace-fed-test/implement/mellon.pdf)
>
> ....system development costs "included $1.8 million for development
> as well as 3 FTE HP staff and approximately $400,000 in system equipment."

(1) DSpace's "broader scope" is precisely what I meant by:

    "if steam is to gather under institutional archiving
    initiatives 'like DSpace' then they need to get their act
    together and focus it specifically on the institutional
    self-archiving of peer-reviewed research output."
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3415.html

(2) Other costs, for other uses, are irrelevant and should not be
factored in. (That includes all staff and operating expenses related to
those other uses.)

(3) EPrints cost an order of magnitude less to develop (and it was
developed, before DSpace, by the same person who developed DSpace,
Rob Tansley, but following specs that were specifically focussed on
the self-archiving of institutional peer-reviewed research output,
not other things).

(4) Creating and maintaining EPrint costs *two* orders of magnitude less
than the above figures for DSpace.

(5) None of these figures will answer my question about how much
self-archiving costs *per paper* until we reckon in the annual
institutional research article output.

(6) The biggest difference between DSpace and EPrints is that EPrints
does not offer a *business plan,* as above, but a plan for filling the
archives with the targetted content: the annual institutional research
article output.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#institution-facilitate-filling
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#researcher/authors-do
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#libraries-do
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#research-funders-do
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publishers-do

EPrints, in other words, is only about OA provision. DSpace is
about many other things. You will only mislead yourself and others
if you factor in the costs of all those other things in reckoning OA
self-archiving costs. DSpace and EPrints are equivalent insofar as their
OA self-archiving capabilities are concerned, and those are the only
capabilities with which those who are interested in OA provision need
be concerned.

(Before replying about preservation, digital content management,
courseware or electronic publication, please see the prior discussions
below!)

    "EPrints, DSpace or ESpace?"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2670.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2837.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
        To join the Forum:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
        Post discussion to:
    american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org
        Hypermail Archive:
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
    BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
            journal whenever one exists.
            http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
    BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
            toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
            http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm