Re: Bean Counting
(4) Last, and perhaps least, surely there are *some* researchers who still care about whether or not their research is making an *impact*, in the sense that it is being used and built upon. Otherwise they might just as well have put it in a desk-drawer (having duly registered it as yet another bean, sprouted), rather than bothering with PUBLICation at all...) So they prefer journals without page charge rather than OA journals. [SH] This is a (regrettably rather common) non-sequitur: One can maximizing one's research impact by maximizing access to one's papers in *two* ways. The 5% (golden) way is to try to find a suitable OA journal to publish one's research in (5% of journals are gold: http://www.doaj.org/ ) and the funds to pay the charges. The 95% way is to publish one's research in the most suitable journal, regardless of whether or not it is gold, but also to make it OA by self-archiving it in one's own institutional repository. (92% of journals are already green in that they have given their official green light to author self-archiving: http://romeo.eprints.org/ ). Stevan Talking of non-sequiturs: the fact that only, perhaps, 5% of journals are 'Gold' (i.e. offer immediate full Open Access) does not by any means imply that there is only a 5% chance of finding an appropriate Open Access journal for one's research. The range of 'Gold' open access journals, at least in the biomedical field, is now so large that for pretty much any conceivable paper, there are several potentially suitable 'Gold' Open Access journals for an author to choose from. So I'm unclear why you continue to suggest that this 5% figure in itself a major obstacle to publishing in a 'Gold' OA journal. The 5% figure is simply a reflection of the fact that currently, only a subset of researchers publish in OA titles, just as currently only a minority self-archive. But the 5% figure is no more of an absolute obstacle to the growth of 'Gold' OA publication, than the current (fairly low) rate of self-archiving is an absolute block to more self-archiving in the future. Matt This email has been scanned by Postini. For more information please visit http://www.postini.com
Re: Bean Counting
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Matthew Cockerill wrote: the fact that only, perhaps, 5% of journals are 'Gold' (i.e. offer immediate full Open Access) does not by any means imply that there is only a 5% chance of finding an appropriate Open Access journal for one's research. We have been through this issue many times now in this Forum: In principle, one could publish the 2.5 million articles that are currently published in the world's 24,000 journals all in *one* journal instead too (and I don't doubt that there are many publishers who would like to be the publisher of that one mega-journal!). But that's not how it works. Journals differ (and compete) in subject matter, contents, quality, track-record, refereeing standards, impact factor. I think it is extremely unrealistic (and wishful thinking) to imagine that we could or should squeeze much or most of today's 100% literature into 5% of its journals (and recent journals, to boot). More important, authors (who don't yet even know enough about OA and its benefits to self-archive the articles they already publish in their journals of choice so as to make them OA *without* giving up their current journals of choice) are unlikely to want to take the more radical step of giving up their current journals of choice in favor of the new 5%, *just because they are OA*! That is not to say that *some* authors will not be ready to do that: Just that most will not, and hence it is the institutional self-archiving route (with 92% of journals already green) that has the real immediate OA growth potential -- and all it needs now is the adoption of institutional OA self-archiving policies. http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/program.html The range of 'Gold' open access journals, at least in the biomedical field, is now so large that for pretty much any conceivable paper, there are several potentially suitable 'Gold' Open Access journals for an author to choose from. Out of a much wider range of potentially suitable Green journals they already publish in (92%). The weasel-word here is suitable. I (as publisher) may think that my new journal is perfectly suitable for many, many authors. But the authors may not think so. They may prefer their established journals. Also relevant: they clearly do not yet value OA enough to reach for it via *either* Gold or Green (even though they are reaching for it via Green at least three times as much (15%)). Moreover, OA Green self-archiving can be made an institutional policy (i.e., a requirement to deposit all articles in the institutional repository, for record-keeping and performance evaluation purposes). http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php But an institution cannot require its authors to publish in journals other than the ones they *choose* to publish in (though they can encourage it, and help fund it). So I'm unclear why you continue to suggest that this 5% figure in itself a major obstacle to publishing in a 'Gold' OA journal. The 5% figure is simply a reflection of the fact that currently, only a subset of researchers publish in OA titles, just as currently only a minority self-archive. But (even without mentioning, again, the 5%/100% camel/needle problem discussed above), every institution is about 3 days of sysad time and a $2000 linux server away from having a repository for all of its research output to be deposited in for years to come, without any author having to switch journals, whereas increasing the number of Gold journals or persuading authors to give up their preferred journals in favor of the ones that exist is a rather more improbable task (and even illogical, since there is in fact no *need* to persuade authors to give up their current journals in order to achieve 100% OA!). That said, I quite agree that there is room for a lot more articles in BMJ journals (in some cases a *lot* more room!). In my view, BMJ is more likely to be able to expand dramatically only *after* 100% OA has been reached via green self-archiving and even then only *if and when* 100% OA should ever generate cancellation pressure on the 95% non-OA journals (which may never happen, or only after a long time), forcing them either to convert to the OA cost-recovery model or risk having their titles migrate to publishers (like BMC) who are ready to do so. By that time, of course (if it ever came ), the cancellations themselves would be generating the institutional windfall savings (nonexistent now) out of which they could pay the OA publishing costs. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm But this is all just abstract armchair speculation: Today's concrete reality is that there is already a way to reach 100% OA immediately via Green -- and all that is now needed is systematic institutional self-archiving policies to ensure that it is reached! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin3-harnad.ppt But the 5% figure is no more of an absolute obstacle to the growth of 'Gold' OA
Bean Counting
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Michel Petitjean wrote: Many authors do not care to be read. and often even do not care to read what write their colleagues. All they want to do is: publish or perish: add +1 in the paper count in the CV It would be interesting to affix actual quantitative figures to these guesstimates! My own anecdotal experience is that (1) Many institutional performance evaluation committees have graduated from naive bean-counting (counting publications), to slightly less naive bean-counting, weighting the beans with the impact factor (average citation count) of the journal in which the publications appeared. Slightly less naive again is to consider also the direct citation count for each of the candidate's beans. Under these material circumstances, insouciance about the impact weight of one's beans would seem rather impractical. (About authors who don't read anyone else's work: nolo contendere.) (2) Many authors I know (myself not excepted), when they open a text in their own research area, immediately do a vanity check -- to see whether they themselves have been cited. This too suggests something less than utter insouciance about being read. (3) In the online age, vanity-checks have also extended to a marked interest in the download counts for one's publications. (4) Last, and perhaps least, surely there are *some* researchers who still care about whether or not their research is making an *impact*, in the sense that it is being used and built upon by others. Otherwise they might just as well have put it in a desk-drawer (having duly registered it as yet another bean, sprouted), rather than bothering with PUBLICation at all... So they prefer journals without page charge rather than OA journals. This is a (regrettably rather common) non-sequitur: One can maximize one's research impact by maximizing access to one's papers in *two* ways. The 5% (golden) way is to try to find a suitable OA journal to publish one's paper in (5% of journals are gold: http://www.doaj.org/ ) and the funds to pay the charges. The 95% way is to publish one's paper in the most suitable journal, regardless of whether or not it is gold, but also to make it OA by self-archiving it in one's own institutional repository. (92% of journals are already green in that they have given their official green light to author self-archiving: http://romeo.eprints.org/ ). Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-1 (green): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal http://romeo.eprints.org/ OR BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a open-access journal if/when a suitable one exists. http://www.doaj.org/ AND in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article in your institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/
Re: Bean Counting
Dear Stevan, The great strength of OA as you have always propounded it is that it deals with the needs of the reader/author in smaller schools as well, the ones that cannot afford all the subscriptions. The same is true when those people are authors. Just as one does not want to put handicaps in the way of their reading, one does not want to add further difficulties to their publishing. You will recall the early finding of bibiometrics that the majority of people who publish have published just once. (And similiarly along the Zipf distribution). I would perhaps have thought as you do if my only experience had been universities like Princeton and Berkeley and Montreal and their European equivalents. Most academics and most colleges and universities are not in this position. For most of the departments at many places I know (I do not want to mention names, as it might be taken wrong) the requirement is 1 or 2 or 3 papers in refereed journals of any sort for tenure, or for subsequent promotion. Of course more subtle measures are avaolable and can be used; the more sophisticated schools use them . But we are dealing with reality here. Dr. David Goodman Associate Professor Palmer School of Library and Information Science Long Island University dgood...@liu.edu -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Stevan Harnad Sent: Wed 3/9/2005 7:13 AM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Bean Counting On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Michel Petitjean wrote: Many authors do not care to be read. and often even do not care to read what write their colleagues. All they want to do is: publish or perish: add +1 in the paper count in the CV It would be interesting to affix actual quantitative figures to these guesstimates! My own anecdotal experience is that (1) Many institutional performance evaluation committees have graduated from naive bean-counting (counting publications), to slightly less naive bean-counting, weighting the beans with the impact factor (average citation count) of the journal in which the publications appeared. Slightly less naive again is to consider also the direct citation count for each of the candidate's beans. Under these material circumstances, insouciance about the impact weight of one's beans would seem rather unrealistic. (2) Many authors I know (myself not excepted), when they open a text in their own research area, immediately do a vanity check -- to see whether they themselves have been cited. This too suggests something less than utter insouciance about being read. (3) In the online age, vanity-checks have also extended to a marked interest in the download counts for one's publications. (4) Last, and perhaps least, surely there are *some* researchers who still care about whether or not their research is making an *impact*, in the sense that it is being used and built upon. Otherwise they might just as well have put it in a desk-drawer (having duly registered it as yet another bean, sprouted), rather than bothering with PUBLICation at all...) So they prefer journals without page charge rather than OA journals. This is a (regrettably rather common) non-sequitur: One can maximizing one's research impact by maximizing access to one's papers in *two* ways. The 5% (golden) way is to try to find a suitable OA journal to publish one's research in (5% of journals are gold: http://www.doaj.org/ ) and the funds to pay the charges. The 95% way is to publish one's research in the most suitable journal, regardless of whether or not it is gold, but also to make it OA by self-archiving it in one's own institutional repository. (92% of journals are already green in that they have given their official green light to author self-archiving: http://romeo.eprints.org/ ). Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
