Self-archiving publications

This chapter discusses the historical development, current practice and future prospects of the self-archiving of research papers in open-access repositories (so-called 'e-print archives'). It describes how the development of interoperable e-print repositories in a number of subject communities has shown that self-archiving can benefit academic researchers (and potentially others) by enabling quick and easy access to the research literature and therefore maximising the impact potential of papers. Realising that the possible benefits are high and the technical entry barriers low, many organisations such as universities have recently tried to encourage widespread self-archiving by setting up institutional repositories. However, major barriers to self-archiving remain - most of them cultural and managerial. There are concerns about quality control, intellectual property rights, disturbing the publishing status quo, and workload. Ways in which these issues are currently being addressed are discussed in this chapter. A number of self-archiving initiatives in different countries have been set up to address the concerns and to kick-start e-print repository use. However, issues remain which require further investigation; those discussed in this chapter include discipline differences, definitions of 'publication', versioning problems, digital preservation, costing and funding models, and metadata standards. The ways in which these issues are resolved will be important in determining the future of self-archiving. Possible futures are discussed with particular reference to journal publishing and quality control. If widely adopted, self-archiving might come to assume a central place in the scholarly communication process, but a great deal of restructuring of the process needs to take place before this potential can be realised.

Organizational, systems and human issues in production planning, scheduling and control

With global markets and global competition, pressures are placed on manufacturing organizations to compress order fulfillment times, meet delivery commitments consistently and also maintain efficiency in operations to address cost issues. This chapter argues for a process perspective on planning, scheduling and control that integrates organizational planning structures, information systems as well as human decision makers. The chapter begins with a reconsideration of the gap between theory and practice, in particular for classical scheduling theory and hierarchical production planning and control. A number of the key studies of industrial practice are then described and their implications noted. A recent model of scheduling practice derived from a detailed study of real businesses is described. Socio-technical concepts are then introduced and their implications for the design and management of planning, scheduling and control systems are discussed. The implications of adopting a process perspective are noted along with insights from knowledge management. An overview is presented of a methodology for the (re-)design of planning, scheduling and control systems that integrates organizational, system and human perspectives. The most important messages from the chapter are then summarized.