PubMed Central OAI-compliance
Stevan Harnad wrote: (PubMedCentral, not being, alas, OAI-compliant, was left out). Good news. This looks like it will be rectified very soon. At 11:51 05/09/03 -0400, Monica Romiti wrote: The OAI protocol has been implemented and we are working on the documentation. We are working to have it ready by a couple of weeks. Monica L. Romiti PubMed Central Steve Hitchcock
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
?iso-8859-1?Q?Hugo_Fjelsted_Alr=F8e?= writes > By "community-building", I mean that such archives can contribute to the > creation or development of the identity of a scholarly community in > research areas that go across the established disciplinary matrix of the > university world. This crucial if self-archiving is to take off. > I know the same thing can in principle be done with OAI-compliant > university archives and a "disciplinary hub" or "research area hub", and > in ten years time, we may not be able to tell the difference. But today, > it is still not quite the same thing. Correct. This is a point that is too many times overlooked. RePEc (see http://repec.org) prodives an example for this in the area of economics. RePEc archives are not OAI compliant but an OAI gateway export all the RePEc data. Many RePEc services are in the business of community building. The crucial part, though, it RePEc's author registration service. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org from Espoo, Finlandhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: How to compare research impact of toll- vs. open-access research
Fully agree that comparisons must be relevant. Let's audit the download claims of all publishers. And only those that concern articles younger than 2 years, say, in order to avoid comparing new material with ancient articles that are hardly ever downloaded. One particular characteristic of open access articles is that any audited downloads form the publisher's site will always be understating reality. This is in the nature or open access: the articles can be -- and are -- stored at and downloaded from multiple repositories, large and small. BioMed Central does not count "every ornament associated with a file" and I can't quite believe that Elsevier does that, either. Jan Velterop BioMed Central > -Original Message- > From: Albert Henderson [mailto:chess...@compuserve.com] > Sent: 08 September 2003 23:21 > To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org > Subject: Re: How to compare research impact of toll- vs. open-access > research > > > on Sat, 6 Sep 2003 Stevan Harnad wrote > > > The following data posted by Peter Suber in > > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html > > indicate that open-access articles (from BioMedCentral) > average at least > > 89 times as many downloads as toll-access articles (from > Elsevier). (The > > 89 is probably an undercount, because it does not include > PubMedCentral > > downloads.) > > > > PETER SUBER: > > "Elsevier has put some PowerPoint slides on the web summarizing > > its interim results for 2003. Slide #16 shows that > there were 4.5 > > million full-text articles in ScienceDirect on June 30, > 2003, and > > slide #15 shows that there were 124 million article downloads in > > the 12 months preceding that date. This means that its articles > > were downloaded an average of 28 times each during the > past year. > > http://www.investis.com/reedelsevierplc/data/interims2003b.ppt > > > > "For comparison I asked Jan Velterop of BioMed Central what the > > download figure was for BMC articles during the same > time period. He > > reports that the average is about 2500 per year, which doesn't > > count downloads of the same articles from PubMed > Central. This is > > 89 times the Elsevier number. " > > I don't believe this 'data' can be taken > seriously. There is no standard for > counting 'downloads.' One party will > count every ornament associated with a > file while the next may count only files. > Comparisons must be relevant. BioMedCentral's > list of journals bears only a faint > resemblance to Elsevier's. The Sigmetric > community went through considerable agony > over 'fairness' when the only source was > ISI. Now you want to compare data from two > unrelated sources? > > Let's examine the data more closely > before jumping to wishful conclusions. > This is supposed to be about science. > > Best wishes, > > Albert Henderson > Pres., Chess Combination Inc. > POB 2423 Bridgeport CT 06608-0423 > > > Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY. > This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information on a proactive email security service working around the clock, around the globe, visit http://www.messagelabs.com
Re: How to compare research impact of toll- vs. open-access research
I think Stevan and I are in basic agreement both about the areas in which bibliometric research is needed, and the practical measures to follow meanwhile. I am also in agreement with him that if one is measuring purely research impact, citations are a more directly relevant figure in the typical scientific fields than total downloads (Provided that one takes account of the sometimes artificial patterns of citing behavior--which continues to be an actively studied question). But libraries --even research libraries-- support more things than the production of journal articles. In particular, they support higher education. True, in most fields of science all good theses are published (and I and others have studied and are studying the relationship between citations in theses and in the corresponding papers). But there is a good deal of preparatory work before the student reaches that point, on both the graduate and the undergraduate levels. As a rough estimate, about one-half the cost of a typical university library is attributed to research and half to education. The amount of staff and resources devoted to purposes that do not result in published papers may seem surprisingly large--but no one ever claimed that higher education is or can be an efficient activity. One could argue that research can proceed in an environment free of any level of teaching below the postdoctoral. Such institutions are the exception. This may be a personal bias, but I think that faculty need graduate students--and ideally even undergraduates. Recall that Rockefeller and later CSHLQB did add graduate schools. Total use, as measured by downloads/readings can be measured objectively, and techniques are developing for measurements that will be more precise than the current + or - 50 percent. For a detailed discussion of the current and evolving standards see www.projectcounter.org (yes, there is a personal interest to declare--I'm one of the executive committee, which is about half publishers and half librarians). Doing arithmetic with figures from ISI may be tedious, but it is conceptually well understood. It is, of course, a classic mistake to assume without further analysis that what is easiest to measure is what is most relevant. The quality of research cannot be fully understood by measuring parameters from the outside. The first book I assign my students is "Thinks..." by David Lodge. > ! The *quality* of the weather can only be known by > experiencing it directly, and that is what meteorology is trying to spare > us the trouble of having to do for ourselves, in advance, in every > case!) -- The practical measure meanwhile, of course, is open access by any suitable means. The one thing we know does not work is the present system. - Dr. David Goodman Associate Professor Palmer School of Library and Information Science Long Island University dgood...@liu.edu (and, formerly: Princeton University Library)
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Eberhard R. Hilf wrote: > the physics ArXiv has a linear increase of the number of papers put in per > month, this gives a quadratic acceleration of the total content (growth > rate of Data base), not linear. Maybe so. But slide 25 of http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.htm (slide 25) still looks pretty linear to me. And it looks as if 100% was not only *not* reached at this rate 10 years after self-archiving started in physics in 1991, but it won't be reached for another 10 years or so... > Total amount by now may be at 10-15 % of all papers in physics. (10-15% of the annual output, I assume.) I count that as appallingly low, considering what is so easily feasible (though stunningly higher than any other field!)... > Linear growth of input rate means the number of physicists and fields > using it rises, while in each field (and physicist) a saturation is > reached after a first exponential individual rise. Interesting, but the relevant target is 100% of the annual output of physics (and all other disciplines) -- yesterday! > Never there will be a saturation such that all papers will go this way, > since in different fields culture and habits and requirements are > different. -- I couldn't follow that: Never 100%? Even at this rate? I can't imagine why not. Cultural differences? Do any of the cultural differences between fields correspond to indifference or antipathy toward research impact -- toward having their research output read, used, cited? Unless the cultural differences are specifically with respect to that, then they are irrelevant. Requirement differences? Are any universities or research funders indifferent or averse to their researchers' impact? Unless they are, any remaining requirement-differences are irrelevant. Habit differences? Well, yes, there are certainly those. But that is just what this is all about *changing*! Are any field's current access/impact practises optimal? or unalterable for some reason? If not, then habit-change is (and always has been) the target! And the point is that the rate of habit-change is still far too slow -- relative to what is not only possible, but easily done, and immensely beneficial to research, researchers, etc. -- in all disciplines. > [That is why it is e.g. best, to keep letter distribution by > horses at a remote island (Juist) alive since the medieval times]. That I really couldn't follow! If you mean paper is still a useful back-up, sure. But we're not talking about back-up. We are talking about open online access, which has been reachable for at least a decade and a half now, and OAI-interoperably since 1999. What more is the research cavalry waiting for, before it will stoop to drink? Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html or http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, ?iso-8859-1?Q?Hugo_Fjelsted_Alr=F8e?= wrote: > I think it is still too early to write off any of the possible paths to > open access within the field of self-archiving (not that you do that). I > see a potentially very fruitful role for community-building archives > that focus on certain research areas. These could be facilitated or > mandated by some of the specialized public research institutions that, > together with universities and private companies, inhabit the research > landscape. I think of research institutions oriented towards applied > research within for instance environmental research, agriculture, public > health, education, community development, etc. Here, there is a clear > two-sided research communication: towards the public and towards other > researchers in the field. Open access thus serves two communicative > purposes, improving scholarly communication and improving public access > to research results, besides the complementary purpose of institutional > self-promotion. All true. And certainly a national research centre like France's CNRS or INSERM or INRA (where Helene Bosc is so active http://phy043.tours.inra.fr:8080/ ) or Germany's Max-Planck Institutes or Italy's CNR or NIH intramural research groups or even CERN's distributed research community could each create (a kind of) central archive consisting of its own research output. It is clear how an institutional policy could mandate this, and how this would be in the joint interests of the researchers and their institution -- whether a university or a distributed national research centre. These national research centres, after all, are the hosts of the research and the sponsors of the research, sharing its costs and the credits. But it is not clear to me how any other kind of central entity (apart from a research funding agency) could mandate self-archiving: What would be the shared carrots? And what would be the pertinent sticks? I certainly can't imagine a Learned Society (other than a research funder or a research publisher) being able to induce its members or co-disciplinarians to self-archive in the way a university or national research centre could induce its researchers to do so. (But maybe others with better imaginations than mine can think of a credible causal scenario?) > By "community-building", I mean that such archives can contribute to the > creation or development of the identity of a scholarly community in > research areas that go across the established disciplinary matrix of the > university world. It would be nice to see a new subdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field consolidate its existence by self-archiving collectively. But wouldn't founding their own journal or journals be the more likely way they would go about it? Each researcher in the new sub- or multidisciplinary field presumably has his own institution, hence potentially his own institutional open-access archives, all linked by the glue of OAI-interoperability. The new sub- or multidisciplinary name that unites them simply amounts to another metadata tag in OAI subject-space. There is no need for the papers to sit physically in the same place. But if it is more likely that these researchers will self-archive if they have the new tag as the banner, and a dedicated archive as the locus, more power to them! > I have myself initiated an archive in research in > organic agriculture (http://orgprints.org), which we hope will become a > centre for international communication and cooperation in this area. > Scientific papers from research in organic agriculture are published in > many different specialized disciplinary journals as well as in general > scientific journals and journals focused at organic agriculture, and it > is not easy for researchers to keep track of all that is being > published. As noted, a unique field-descriptor tag would unify all this distributed work as surely as a dedicated archive would, but if there really is a greater incentive to self-archive for the sake of the new subfield than for the sake of the impact of the research of each researcher and his institution, then this will prove to be an interesting historical fact for those who write the history of the slow and belated rise of open-access, as optimal and inevitable as it have might been! > I know the same thing can in principle be done with OAI-compliant > university archives and a "disciplinary hub" or "research area hub", and > in ten years time, we may not be able to tell the difference. But today, > it is still not quite the same thing. I note that Organic Eprints http://orgprints.org/ with 581 records has over twice as many records as the average eprints.org archive (25,151 known records to date divided by 106 known archives = 237 records on average) most of them institutional (though there are some much bigger university archives, such as Lund's http://eprints.lub.lu.se/ with 2143 records!). But alas both that number and its competitors a
Re: How to compare research impact of toll- vs. open-access research
on Sat, 6 Sep 2003 Stevan Harnad wrote > The following data posted by Peter Suber in > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html > indicate that open-access articles (from BioMedCentral) average at least > 89 times as many downloads as toll-access articles (from Elsevier). (The > 89 is probably an undercount, because it does not include PubMedCentral > downloads.) > > PETER SUBER: > "Elsevier has put some PowerPoint slides on the web summarizing > its interim results for 2003. Slide #16 shows that there were 4.5 > million full-text articles in ScienceDirect on June 30, 2003, and > slide #15 shows that there were 124 million article downloads in > the 12 months preceding that date. This means that its articles > were downloaded an average of 28 times each during the past year. > http://www.investis.com/reedelsevierplc/data/interims2003b.ppt > > "For comparison I asked Jan Velterop of BioMed Central what the > download figure was for BMC articles during the same time period. He > reports that the average is about 2500 per year, which doesn't > count downloads of the same articles from PubMed Central. This is > 89 times the Elsevier number. " I don't believe this 'data' can be taken seriously. There is no standard for counting 'downloads.' One party will count every ornament associated with a file while the next may count only files. Comparisons must be relevant. BioMedCentral's list of journals bears only a faint resemblance to Elsevier's. The Sigmetric community went through considerable agony over 'fairness' when the only source was ISI. Now you want to compare data from two unrelated sources? Let's examine the data more closely before jumping to wishful conclusions. This is supposed to be about science. Best wishes, Albert Henderson Pres., Chess Combination Inc. POB 2423 Bridgeport CT 06608-0423 Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY.
