Research Indicating that OA Impact Weaker Than Fee-Based Publishing
Posted by Monica Berger on February 24, 2009
from the Chronicle of Higher Ed news blog: February 23, 2009
Fee-Based Journals Get Better Results, Study in Fee-Based Journal Reports
Research scientists with egalitarian tendencies toward publication may want to think twice if they also hope to make tenure. A study by a pair of investigators at the University of Chicago has concluded that researchers may find a wider audience if they make their findings available through a fee-based Web site rather than make their work freely available on the Internet.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science, say that when a research article is offered online after being in print for one year, the use of an open-source format increases citations to the article by 8 percent. But when a paid-subscription format is used to distribute a year-old print article, the citations increase by 12 percent.
The exception, said the study’s authors, James A. Evans and Jacob Reimer, is the developing world, where researchers were far more likely to read and cite open-source articles. Mr. Evans and Mr. Reimer based their findings on data from more than 26 million articles in more than 8,000 scientific journals dating back to 1945.
“Open access does have a positive impact on the attention that’s given to the journal articles,” Mr. Evans said, “but it’s a small impact.”
Science, which published the findings, charges $142 for an annual subscription. —Paul Basken
Posted on Monday February 23, 2009 | Permalink |
Stevan Harnad said
No, the Evans & Reimer (E & R) study in Science does not show that “researchers may find a wider audience if they make their findings available through a fee-based Web site rather than make their work freely available on the Internet.” This is complete nonsense, since the “fee-based website” is accessible to those who pay in any case. (It is simply the online version of the journal; for access to it, an individual or institution pays an access fee.) The free version is extra: a supplement to that fee-based online version, not an alternative to it: it is provided for those would-be users who cannot afford the access-fee. In E & R’s study, the free access is provided — after an access-embargo of up to a year or more — by the journal itself. In studies by others, the free access is provided by the author, depositing the final refereed draft of the article on his own website, free for all (usually immediately, with no prior embargo). E & R did not examine the latter form of free online access at all. (Paul Basken has confused (1) the size of the benefits of fee-based online access over fee-based print-access alone with (2) the size of the benefits of free online access over the benefits of fee-based online-access alone. The fault is partly E & R’s for describing their findings in such an equivocal way.)
Monica said
Let’s all read the original study in Science. Thanks to Steve Harnad for encouraging us to read beyond the headlines.
Monica said
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5917/1025 to go to the specific page with the article in Science as well as the data supplement: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/323/5917/1025/DC1/1