[GOAL] Re: Elsevier Study Commissioned by UK BIS

Fri Dec 6 19:00:22 GMT 2013

Hi all

The Elsevier study on OA prevalence study was part of broader report. 
The methods are just shortly mentioned so its a bit problematic to 
comment in detail.
The global gold OA share found is 9,7 % of scopus articles, consisting 
of 5,5 % APC paid and 4,2 others (not just 5.5 % as Stevan noted below). 
The global hybrid share is 0.5. The green global share could be assumed 
to more or less be the sum of preprint versions of 6.4 % and accepted 
versions 5.0 %, adding directly to around 11 %. In particular if their 
method only took the first found full text copy and then classified it

The big flaw of the study seems to be in the sample used, since it 
consisted of equal numbers of Scopus articles that had been published 2 
months, 6 months, 12 months and 24 months before the Googling. If the 
hits are simple added up for all the sampled articles this means that a 
major share of selfarchivied manuscripts are ignored, due to embargoes 
or author behavior in for instance selfarchiving once a year. For 
instance half of the copies in PMC would not be found in this way. 
Equally the very low figure for "Open Archives", 1.0 %, could be a 
result of this method. Our own results for delayed OA are around 5 %.

So all in all the figures are much lower than if one includes articles 
made OA with at least a one year delay, which we find is the method we 
would recommend for studies claiming to give overall OA uptake figures. 
Whether this methodological choice was a conscious one from the study 
team or just an oversight is difficult to know. But if they would have 
adhered to a strict interpretation that only immediate OA is OA, the 
sampling should have been different. Now it's somewhere in between.

Best regards

Bo-Christer

  and On 12/6/13 5:31 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> Elsevier has just conducted and published a study commissioned by UK 
> BIS: "International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base -- 
> 2013 
> <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/performance-of-the-uk-research-base-international-comparison-2013>"
>
> This study finds twice as much Green OA (11.6%) as Gold OA (5.9%) in 
> the UK (where bothGreen OA repositories 
> <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD> and Green 
> OA mandates 
> <http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm> began) and about 
> equal levels of Green (5.0%) and Gold (5.5%) in the rest of the world.
>
> There are methodological weaknesses in the Elsevier study, which was 
> based on SCOPUS data (Gold data are direct and based on the whole data 
> set, Green data are partial and based on hand-sampling; timing is not 
> taken into account; categories of OA are often arbitrary and not 
> mutually exclusive, etc). But the overall pattern may have some validity.
>
> What does it mean?
>
> It means the effects of Green OA mandates in the UK 
> <http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/geoname=5F2=5FGB.html> -- 
> where there are relatively more of them, and they have been there for 
> a half decade or more -- are detectable, compared to the rest of the 
> world <http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/>, where mandates are 
> relatively fewer.
>
> But 11.6% Green is just a pale, partial indicator of how much OA Green 
> OA mandates generate: If instead of looking at the world (where about 
> 1% of institutions and funders have OA mandates) or the UK (where the 
> percentage is somewhat higher, but many of the mandates are still weak 
> and ineffective ones), one looks specifically at the OA percentages 
> for effectively mandated institutions 
> <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/358882/>, the Green figure jumps to over 
> 80% (about half of it immediate-OA and half embargoed OA: deposited, 
> and accessible during the embargo via the repository's automated 
> copy-request Button, with a click from the requestor and a click from 
> the author).
>
> So if the planet's current level of Green OA is 11.6%, its level will 
> jump to at least 80% as effective Green OA mandates are adopted.
>
> Meanwhile, Gold OA will continue to be unnecessary, over-priced, 
> double-paid (which journal subscriptions still need to be paid) and 
> potentially even double-dipped (if paid to the same hybrid 
> subscription/Gold publisher) out of scarce research funds contributed 
> by UK tax-payers ("Fool's Gold 
> <https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%28fools+OR+fool%27s%29+gold>").
>
> But once Green OA prevails worldwide, Fair Gold 
> <https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%22fair+gold%22> (and 
> all the Libre OA re-use rights that users need and authors want to 
> provide) will not be far behind.
>
> We are currently gathering data to test whether the immediate-deposit 
> <https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=%22immediate+deposit%22+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg> (HEFCE 
> <https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=hefce+immediate+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg>/Liege 
> <https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=liege+model++blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg>) 
> Green OA mandate model is indeed the most effective mandate (compared, 
> for example, with the Harvard 
> <https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=Harvard+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbas=0&tbm=blg> copyright-retention 
> model with opt-out, or the NIH 
> <https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=NIH+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg> model 
> with a 12 month embargo).
>
> *Stevan Harnad*
>
> P.S. Needless to say, the fact that the UK's Green OA rate is twice as 
> high as its Gold OA rate is true /despite/ the new Finch/FCUK policy 
> <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1074-html> which 
> subsidizes and prefers Gold and tries to downgrade Green -- certainly 
> not because of it!
>
>
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