[GOAL] Re: BLOG: Unlocking Research 'Half-life is half the story'

[Couture Marc]

Hi all,

What we would like to see here as evidence is something like what is being done about open access to scholarly monographs: rigorous studies, involving control groups and close monitoring, testing the effect of making a toll-free copy available.

I'm aware of two such studies, both made as part of the OAPEN initiative: one in the Netherlands and one in the UK (still ongoing, but preliminary results have been released).

Interestingly, both found no measurable effect of toll-free availability on the sales. The only "effect" of toll-free access is a tremendous increase of use, as measured by summing the sales and the (much more numerous) downloads.

Here also, fears that scholarly publishing is incompatible, or endangered by OA were, and still are, regularly aired.

It's possible that things are not the same for journal publishing. But, pending reliable results, we simply don't know, and predictions as to a loss of subscriptions are nothing but speculation (or hypotheses).

For details: http://www.oapen.nl/images/attachments/article/58/OAPEN-NL-final-report.pdf  and http://openaccess.ox.ac.uk/wp-uploads/2014/07/JACKSON-Oxford-OA-Monographs-June-2014.pdf

Marc Couture


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