[GOAL] Re: OASPA CC-BY chart: where's the data?

[Heather Morrison]

To illustrate how growth in the use of this one license is likely conflated with overall growth of open access and other factors such as an increas in OASPA membership, here are the data for the growth in DOAJ including search by article for 2012:

	• 8,461 journals - increased by 1,133 over past year or 3 titles per day
	• 4,199 journals searchable by article - up 739 over past year, 2 per day
	• 944,804 articles searchable by article - up 246,258 over past year, 674 per day
	• easy prediction: over 1 million articles searchable by article early in 2013 

from: The Dramatic Growth of Open Access 2012 early year-end edition:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2012/12/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-2012.html

The total number of articles searchable by article is impacted or potentially by several factors:
-	additive - new articles published by existing journals
-	increasing publication rates for OA journals
-	technical - more journals added to the mix (more journals searchable by article at DOAJ)
-	digitization of back issues for journals that have converted from print

What does this mean for interpreting the OASPA chart?

-	the growth shown likely mirrors the overall growth of open access. During this time frame, there has been dramatic growth not only in OA journals, but also in repositories and their contents.
-	the OASPA chart shows a significant upswing in 2008, the year OASPA was formed as David Prosser points out.

In order to properly assess the data, what is needed is an explanation of the research method and details about the data itself. Ideally, the full data for anyone for download and mine.

I find it mind-boggling that scholarly publishers and their associations, whether traditional or open access, need to have someone point out to them that if they wish to present data / chart to make a case, they should present their research method and be prepared to accepted scholarly critique.

best,

Heather Morrison, PhD
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com

On 2013-03-12, at 1:46 AM, David Prosser wrote:

> As the chart has data going back to 2000 and OASPA was only formed in 2008 I'm finding it difficult to see how the figures can be influenced by growing OASPA membership!
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> On 11 Mar 2013, at 20:57, Heather Morrison wrote:
> 
>> OASPA has posted a picture of a chart of CC-BY growth on their blog:
>> http://oaspa.org/growth-in-use-of-the-cc-by-license-2/
>> 
>> The chart by itself is difficult to interpret. For example, to what extent is CC-BY growth conflated with OASPA membership growth or overall open access growth? 
>> 
>> Will OASPA be releasing the data for all to mine?
>> 
>> best,
>> 
>> Heather G. Morrison
>> 
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