Cover sheets considered harmful

The spread of the cover sheet is a divisive phenomenon. Their appearance is geographically bound and their content situated in the local political and financial context. In this article we discuss the arguments for and against the coversheet in its guise as a fixture on institutional repository preprints, exploring the issue through statistical information gathered from survey material and from text analysis. We lay out the reasoning behind the use of cover sheets in the United Kingdom and discuss their prevalence and the underlying trends. In this manner, we identify concerns with the use of cover sheets from the perspectives of text mining and everyday use of repositories.