Re: What about delayed open access
It has been a shortcoming of most studies on both the extent of OA and the size and extent of the OA impact advantage that they take into account the date of publication of both the cited articles and the citing article, but not the date on which (Green) OA articles were made OA. Finer-grained studies are underway. I think anyone with an open mind will agree that if OA is beneficial to research impact and progress (i.e., if denying access to non-paying users is deleterious to overall research impact and progress) then OA is desirable immediately upon acceptance for publication, and not only after an access-denial interval (embargo). There are already at least two kinds of analyses that show this: (1) The studies of Kurtz and co-workers on the Early Access advantage for prepublication preprints in astronomy and physics. (Earlier self-archiving does not just generate downloads and citations earlier, but that earlier usage and citation fans out into more downloads and citations overall, accelerating research not just by reaching a fixed "impact quota" sooner, but by increasing its impact quota.) (2) Brody's studies have shown that not only does self-archiving lead to earlier citations, but that higher rates of downloads early on are correlated with higher rates of citations later. http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/40867/02/chapter5distro.pdf Some comments below: Bo-Christer Bjork wrote: > In the current OA barometer project we're now in the final stages of our > empirical work trying to establish what part of the 2008 peer reviewed > article production is available as OA. Overall it seems the share available > in journals and as e-copies is around equally big. What is particularly > interesting is the split into different types of channels also inside gold > and green. We will publish the results in due course but I would already now > point out that we have found a perhaps surprisingly large amount of articles > which have become OA on toll-gate publishers sites after a delay of 12 > months. It is crucial, then, to classify these "delayed OA" articles made OA by their publishers after an embargo period as Gold OA, not as Green OA. They are only Green OA if self-archived by their authors. Both the Green OA and Gold OA tallies should be classified by posting date, otherwise we will get a misleading impression of both the OA proportion per year of publication and the annual growth rate for OA self-archiving. [Note that with publishers making their own articles OA after an embargo, this means *both* Green OA and Gold OA (and not just Green OA) need to be analyzed in terms of deposit date and not just publication date.] > Very often you can only find this out after trying out with more > recent articles, since the publishers in question don't seem to advertise > the delayed OA. It becomes particularly intriguing when the same publishers > also practice "Open choice" for individual articles. Why pay if all articles > become free after 12 months anyway? Better question: Why pay for immediate Gold OA, or wait for delayed Gold OA, when you can self-archive and provide immediate Green OA? > I think we should take note of this and accept delayed OA as a viable form > of Open Access. What is in fact the difference between this and a repository > copy posted after an embargo of 12 months. A big difference. See the Kurtz and Brody studies for a foretaste. (Of course the degree to which usage and citations are accelerated and augmented by immediate OA compared to a one-year OA embargo will no doubt vary by discipline, being greatest for fast-growing, fast-turnaround fields; but it is hard to believe that there is any field in which it is worth publishing one's results at all where it is not worth making them accessible to all potential users immediately upon publication.) > From a more philosophical viewpoint I would like to raise the issue of > weather each article reading is equally valuable from society's viewpoint. A > very important type of reading is where the reader finds an interesting > citation and tries to retrieve the cited article. For this type of reading > 12 month delayed OA provides almost an equal service to full OA. That's hardly true (or merely philosophical) if that reading happens to occur within a year of the publication of the cited article (and it's another reason for self-archiving articles immediately upon acceptance for publication, rather than waiting out the publication lag). > And usually the chances are much higher that these readings influence the > readers own > research and that the article is read more carefully than the average > current awareness reading where researchers quicly scan new articles in the > journals they follow. That sounds like a more philosophical point as it stands. It would be more useful to have objective evidence on that too (for example, either peer ratings or citation counts for articles that cite other articles within different citation-latency periods
Re: What about delayed open access
While delayed free access is better than no free access, you suggest that the question of whether delayed free access is better than immediate free access is equivalent to asking whether "each article reading is equally valuable from society's viewpoint." But this issue perfectly illustrates why delayed free access is far less valuable - most accesses of most articles are made soon after publication. For open access articles these early accesses are free - for delayed free access articles tolls are collected (indeed, for most publishers the delay is titrated to ensure that most accesses are tolled). Thus, even if we accept that every reading is equivalently valuable, delayed free access has substantially less value than immediate open access. 2009/11/15 : > Dear all regardless of your colour (gold or green) > > I've been following the recent debates on this forum with interest. Reminds > me a bit about the schisms beteen the boljseviks and the mensjeviks at the > beginning of the Russian revolution. > > In the current OA barometer project we're now in the final stages of our > empirical work trying to establish what part of the 2008 peer reviewed > article production is available as OA. Overall it seems the share available > in journals and as e-copies is around equally big. What is particularly > interesting is the split into different types of channels also inside gold > and green. We will publish the results in due course but I would already now > point out that we have found a perhaps surprisingly large amount of articles > which have become OA on toll-gate publishers sites after a delay of 12 > months. Very often you can only find this out after trying out with more > recent articles, since the publishers in question don't seem to advertise > the delayed OA. It becomes particularly intriguing when the same publishers > also practice "Open choice" for individual articles. Why pay if all articles > become free after 12 months anyway? > > I think we should take note of this and accept delayed OA as a viable form > of Open Access. What is in fact the difference between this and a repository > copy posted after an embargo of 12 months. > > From a more philosophical viewpoint I would like to raise the issue of > weather each article reading is equally valuable from society's viewpoint. A > very important type of reading is where the reader find's an interesting > citation and tries to retrieve the cited article. For this type of reading > 12 month delayed OA provides almost an equal service to full OA. And usually > the chances are much higher that these readings influence the readers own > research and that the article is read more carefully than the average > current awareness reading where researchers quicly scan new articles in the > journals they follow. > > Bo-Christer Björk > -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley
What about delayed open access
[ The following text is in the "UTF-8" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Dear all regardless of your colour (gold or green) I've been following the recent debates on this forum with interest. Reminds me a bit about the schisms beteen the boljseviks and the mensjeviks at the beginning of the Russian revolution. In the current OA barometer project we're now in the final stages of our empirical work trying to establish what part of the 2008 peer reviewed article production is available as OA. Overall it seems the share available in journals and as e-copies is around equally big. What is particularly interesting is the split into different types of channels also inside gold and green. We will publish the results in due course but I would already now point out that we have found a perhaps surprisingly large amount of articles which have become OA on toll-gate publishers sites after a delay of 12 months. Very often you can only find this out after trying out with more recent articles, since the publishers in question don't seem to advertise the delayed OA. It becomes particularly intriguing when the same publishers also practice "Open choice" for individual articles. Why pay if all articles become free after 12 months anyway? I think we should take note of this and accept delayed OA as a viable form of Open Access. What is in fact the difference between this and a repository copy posted after an embargo of 12 months. >From a more philosophical viewpoint I would like to raise the issue of weather each article reading is equally valuable from society's viewpoint. A very important type of reading is where the reader find's an interesting citation and tries to retrieve the cited article. For this type of reading 12 month delayed OA provides almost an equal service to full OA. And usually the chances are much higher that these readings influence the readers own research and that the article is read more carefully than the average current awareness reading where researchers quicly scan new articles in the journals they follow. Bo-Christer Björk
