[GOAL] Re: Tireless Ad Hoc Critiques of OA Study After OA Study: Will Wishful Thinking Ever Cease?

[keith.jeffery at stfc.ac.uk]

Stevan, all -

Of course I agree with the points already made about downloads and citation based on open easy availability.

I wanted to pick up on Stevan's point about 
very persuasive motto:
"public access to publicly funded research"

This is not restricted to health research but also environment, some areas of astronomy and wider.  More importantly, though, most of the general public (as opposed to researchers) gain the information via the media (or some researchers who happen to be great communicators) and it is important that such 'science journalists' should have free open easy access to the relevant information in order to interpret / digest and present for the public a balanced picture of research in a particular area.

Best
Keith

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Keith G Jeffery      Director International Relations       STFC
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-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 23 March 2012 09:14
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Tireless Ad Hoc Critiques of OA Study After OA Study: Will Wishful Thinking Ever Cease?

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 3:40 AM,  Jan W. Schoones, Walaeus Library, The Netherlands, wrote:

>  You write: "Not only is OA research downloaded and cited more -- as common sense would expect, as a result of making it accessible free for all, rather than just for those whose institutions can afford a subscription".
>
> First, downloaded more - I can agree. But cited more? This might be an entire different matter. Usually, as common sense would expect, researchers will cite. The general public, however, will not cite - they do not publish research articles. Given that researchers have "more" access than the general public, due to the access policies of their institution (paid-for-access, open-access, access-by-delivery), the citations to articles will not be hampered by accessibility. Because when it comes to citing an article, a serious researcher has to read it. And to read it, means: getting access, in one way or another.

Jan, there are two assumptions in your reply:

(1) Researchers have sufficient access "one way or another".

and

(2) The extra downloads for open access articles come from the general public (who read, but do not cite).

There are good reasons to doubt both these assumptions:

1. Researchers do not have sufficient access. All researchers are familiar with access denial when they click on articles to which their institutions do not have subscription access. When that way does not work, the "other" way -- to pay $30 per article -- is not a viable option, particularly in an online world where a researcher might be searching and seeking immediate click-through access to dozens of articles a day (if only to skim them and find that many of them are not relevant enough to read, let alone cite).

All of this adds up -- and it adds up to the significantly increased downloads *and* citations that study after study keeps finding, in field after field -- an outcome that publishers are going to great pains to try to deny.

2. In health-related research, the general public has a great interest in reading the readable, relevant articles. But this general public interest does not extend to all or even most scholarly and scientific disciplines (even though for some open access advocates, the hypothesis of a public desire and need to read the peer-reviewed literature -- written mostly for fellow-researchers to use and build upon, in furthering research -- has become a very persuasive motto:
"public access to publicly funded research").

It would require evidence -- not assumptions -- to demonstrate (discipline by discipline) that the increased downloads of peer-reviewed research resulting from open access (and found in every
discipline) come mostly from non-peer rather than peer access.

Until and unless such evidence is found, the natural null hypothesis is that the increased downloads resulting from OA, found and reported by study after study, are the cause of the increased citations, found and reported by study after study.

And that the increased downloads and citations for OA research are both coming from the primary intended readership of the peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal literature: the scholars and scientists for whose uptake and usage -- in building further research
-- the peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal literature is conducted, written, peer-reviewed and published by researchers (and funded by the general public) for the sake of research progress and research applications, to the benefit of the general public.

(It is rather hard to understand how the research library community could believe fervently in the journal affordability crisis while at the same time believing that their users can nevertheless get access to all they need "one way or another"...)

Stevan Harnad

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