[BOAI] mandate growth and article output growth

[Arif Jinha]

Dear colleagues,

there has been some excellent research in the last few years on OA trends. 
It's making for an exciting thesis for grad school which is aimed at looking 
at trends and the impact on the future.  I am just finishing a draft of 
this.

One thing which eludes me is a way to relate growth of article output to 
growth of mandates. It would be a powerful measure of policy to outcome. 
Notably, two types of figures exist for the share of research that is Green 
OA.  15% based on the author self-archiving rate, and 11.4% (2006 base year) 
and 11.9%(2008 base year) from samples.  Then there is research on mandates 
and compliance showing a rise to 80-90% compliance within 2 years where 
there is a mandatory requirement.

Given the 2-year lag, one would expect the measure of availability to 
reflect the spontaneous voluntary archiving rate plus the 80-90% effect of 
mandates implemented 2 years earlier, plus the halfway point for one year 
earlier.  What is tremendously exciting then, is to watch the dramatic 
increase in mandates since 2006, measure the outcome and forecast.

BUT, it is also tremendously difficult to do so based on figures even from 
recent studies, since the massive rise in mandates occurs from 2006 on. 
There is also the trouble of the difference between the spontaneous 
archiving rate of 15% and the availability outcome by samples (11.4;11.9%) 
since we don't have reason to suspect voluntary archivers publish less 
articles than others.

It is VERY difficult to trace a pattern from direct evidence other than 
sampling, since mandates vary so much and duplicate at times 
(instutional/departmental and funder duplication), and repositories contain 
much grey literature and possibly duplication, so one cannot base it off a 
volume of contents, unless one knows the average composition of these 
contents.  The good thing is that we have a good operational definition  - 
peer-reviewed, scholarly research articles, otherwise we are just counting 
every document.

This brings me to my requests!

1. I really welcome any suggestion that can mathematically relate the growth 
in mandates to growth in article availability (policy-outcome analysis).

2. I have some really exciting predicctions for the future, but I am not 
confident of my math skills with regard to modelling/forecasting, so my 
models are quite simple.  Anyone willing to lend a hand with the maths would 
be really welcome, and we'll be able to find out and back up predictions for 
when 50% of articles published each year will be OA.

This work would not be possible without the work of others, and would not be 
possible without the capability to access the research.

Despite the research challenges, it is exciting to track the OA trends, my 
thesis is taking a view from Globalization and International Development (my 
program).

I am really very, very grateful as a grad student to the wonderful advocacy 
and research that has gone one in this very exciting era of scholarship and 
look forward to sharing my thesis results, which I have been tirelessly 
working on, and taking breaks from, in the past few years.

I wish you an excellent spring season.

Arif Jinha of uOttawa