Cablegate: Hal - France's Portal for Scientific Publications

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Lucia A Keegan 11/14/2006 10:11:41 AM From DB/Inbox: Lucia A Keegan

Cable
Text:

UNCLAS PARIS 07290

SIPDIS
cxparis:
ACTION: SCI
INFO: AGR UNESCO AMBO SCIO LABO ENGO ECSO DCM AMB POL
ECON ESCI

DISSEMINATION: SCIX
CHARGE: PROG

APPROVED: SCI:RDRY (EST COMMON
DRAFTED: SCI:MHMASSING
CLEARED: CLEARED:NONE

VZCZCFRI866
RR RUEHC RHEHAAA RHEBAAA RUEHMRE RUEHSR RUEHZN
DE RUEHFR #7290 3121316
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 081316Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2950
INFO RHEHAAA/WHITE HOUSE WASHDC
RHEBAAA/USDOE WASHDC
RUEHMRE/AMCONSUL MARSEILLE 1429
RUEHSR/AMCONSUL STRASBOURG 0243
RUEHZN/EST COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS PARIS 007290

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR OES, EUR/WE
WHITE HOUSE FOR OSTP
DOE FOR OFFICE OF SCIENCE
STATE PASS NSF/INT

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: TINT TNGD FR
SUBJECT: HAL - FRANCE'S PORTAL FOR SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
1. All major French research organizations, the conference of
university presidents (CPU), the conference of 'Grandes Ecoles'
(France's elite universities), and the Pasteur Institute recently

signed a Joint Draft Agreement defining a coordinated approach, at
the national level, for open-access self-archiving of French
research output. The French network of open-access archives is
known as Hyper Article on Line or, simply, HAL. Initially created
by the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 2000, and
developed by the Center for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD),
it will ensure direct scientific communication between academics,
and long term preservation of deposited documents.

2. The HAL project is in line with the arXive site created in 1991
by Paul Ginsparg, an e-print service in the fields of physics,
mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, and quantitative
biology, owned, operated and funded by Cornell University and partly
funded by the National Science Foundation. HAL, on the other hand,
is now open to all scientific disciplines without restriction.
Approximately 1200 documents are reportedly archived every month,
which represents roughly 15 percent of French scientific publication
output.

-------------------------------
Technically superior to arXive?
-------------------------------

3. According to HAL's creator, CCSD Director Franck Laloe, HAL
provides an extensive set of tools and services beneficial to French
researchers, and "technically superior to arXive," e.g.:

- Automatic document submission with link to an international open
archive that increases visibility and impact;

- Simplified submission process for scientists (a single submission
can cover all the researcher's work, evaluation procedures, activity
reports, and replies to requests for quotations);

- Advanced search engine, classification and searches using multiple
criteria;

- Automatic online extraction of all works by author, lab, or
organization, with possible links to the organization's local web
site;

- Creation of "collections" via buffers for authentication of a
lab's publications, the articles in a journal, etc.;

- Alert and watchdog system that can be customized with user-defined
profiles;

- Hal is designed to facilitate the creation of configurable
interfaces for organizations to create their own environments.

4. The joint draft agreement is considered an important advance in
the implementation of French national policy in support of open
access institutional archives. According to the French CNRS
Director of Scientific Communication, "the single archive will
significantly improve the visibility, dissemination, and the
international impact of French scientific research, as data will be
indexed by major research engines, such as Google." Furthermore,
HAL communicates with other major international archive systems and
includes a protocol of agreement about metadata to enrich the
articles.

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Benefits and risks?
-------------------

5. According to media, some French scientists do not
favor HAL out of concern that some scientists might release on the
network data without peer review. HAL's organizers, on the other
hand, argue that articles consulted by other scientists, will
receive critical review and potential errors will be quickly
notified. Furthermore, posting an article on the site does not
prevent its submission for publication to scientific journals with
peer review. HAL's promoters now hope that other countries, notably
within the EU, will join the project, giving France a leading role
in a large system of international direct scientific communication.

STAPLETON

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