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

[J.W.Schoones at lumc.nl]

Dear Ross, Andrew, and Stevan,

Thanks for your input - some of which I would like to comment on. 

Dear Ross,

> Thus easily accessible articles have a clear advantage.

Of course, easily accessible articles have a clear advantage. Open Access articles are a sub-set of easily accessible articles, and so are other subsets of articles as well - in the given institutional research area. So in my view the OA articles have an advantage, but it is less clear than one might suppose. 

> It's very hard to cite articles you can't easily access!

Not very hard - just a matter of priority and a bit of effort. Citing is part of scientific research: content (relevancy) is more important than form (time; available right now).

> no-one will wait days for an inter-library loan. 

Then I know quite some no-ones - and also, inter library loans do not take days these days.

Dear Andrew,

> You are putting the cart before the horse here. A decision to cite
> depends (when the researcher is doing their job properly) on being
> able to read. Only after an article has been read can the decision
> to cite or not come into it. 

Of course, quite right: you can only cite an article if you have read it. In my experience, the access to non-AO-articles is sufficient to suggest what I'm suggesting: there could be a citation advantage for OA articles, but it might be lower than one might presume, if it exists at all.

> If I don't have access to the article, it doesn't even get added to my citaton database

If it might be a truly relevant article, you are doing yourself not a favor. Of course it depends what goals you have, but if an article might influence your conclusions, one should do more to read it then stop when some site says no go.

Dear Stevan,

> 1. Researchers do not have sufficient access. 

In my view there is quite some access. The sufficiency of access might differ per person and institution. What we probably both can agree on is the following statement: researchers do not have access to everything.

> 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"...)

I am indeed part of the research library community. However, I am not a believer. I'm also not a very fervent person. I am merely observing. 

Cordially,

Jan W. Schoones
Walaeus Library, The Netherlands   

-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: vrijdag 23 maart 2012 10:14
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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