Re: What is the threshold for open access Nirvana?
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Garfield, Eugene wrote:
> You have avoided my main point by regurgitating to me what you have stated
> before. However, I appreciate your prompt response. Don't you ever sleep?
> When responding, please attach my original message
Gene, sorry I passed over your main point! (I am usually accused of not
letting anything pass! Maybe it *is* lack of sleep!)
Here again is the whole of your original message (to which I replied
at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3427.html ).
To this first paragraph:
> I have generally avoided discussion in this listserv but I think you have
> introduced a significant distortion to the discussion by quoting the figure
> of 24,000 scientific journals which allegedly produce 2,500,000 articles per
> year. I presume someone has estimated the average of 100 articles per year.
> A more realistic figure for journals would be ten to fifteen thousand
> scientific journals putting aside the crucial question of definition.
I replied that the 24K figure comes from ulrichs and that it is not for
*scientific* journals, but for *peer-reviewed* journals, both scientific
and scholarly. (But this was not your main point, apparently.)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3427.html
Your second paragraph, to which I did not reply first time, was:
> If open access is to become viable it seems to me the key factor is the
> group of 500 to 1000 highest impact journals which account for a substantial
> portion of the significant articles which are published and most cited.
> Unless these journals make it possible for authors to self-archive or to be
> freely accessible you cannot achieve open access nirvana. One might argue
> that once e.g. 50% or more of these most important journals are in the fold
> the breakthrough threshold has been reached.
Please look at the Romeo Journals Table:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm
It shows that 55% of the journals sampled (the Romeo sample was of
the top 7000 of the 24,000) are already either OA ("gold") journals (about 5%)
or "green" journals (50%) (TA journals that support author self-archiving).
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0050.gif
An undetermined portion of the remaining 45% will also agree
to author self-archiving if asked. (I expect that the rising
tide of OA consciousness in the research community today
will raise the 55% figure considerably.)
I leave it to you to tell us whether the top 500-1000 journals
are among the 55% listed as green or gold.
But as you see, we are already past 55% overall, which proves only one
thing: That the problem is not the publishing community! For although
at least 55% of journals are already gold or green/blue, far from 55%
of articles are as yet OA!
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0049.gif
What that means is (1) far from all authors who have a suitable gold
journal to publish in are publishing in gold journals, and (2) far from
all authors who publish in a green journal are self-archiving their
articles. (The shortfall is far more striking and ironic in the case of
self-archiving, because its immediate ceiling is so much higher.)
So what does this say about your suggestion of a 50% "breakthrough
threshold"?
That the 50% breakthrough point may need to be the percentage of the
research community actually grasping the OA that is within their reach,
rather than just the percentage of the publishing community that puts it
within their reach (in response to the ostensible demand, to publishers,
by the research community, for the benefits of open access!)
"Petitions, Boycotts, and Liberating the Refereed Literature Online"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0933.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2053.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3061.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3089.html
This is why I have been beating the drums about the need for
a systematic policy of open-access provision by institutions
and research funders. This natural extension of the "publish or
perish" rule is needed to induce the research community to reach
for what is in their own best interest, and within its grasp, now:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0028.gif
To your third paragraph:
> Since it has been demonstrated that on line access improves both readership
> and citation impact we can certainly expect that the vast majority of the
> low impact journals would be well advised to make their journals open
> access. Whether this increases their impact remains to be seen, but
> increased readership or attention seems inevitable.
I replied with a list of references on the empirical evidence for the
fact that increasing access increases impact -- both download (reading)
impact and citation impact (the former coming before the latte
Re: What is the threshold for open access Nirvana?
You have avoided my main point by regurgitating to me what you have stated
before. However, I appreciate your prompt response. Don't you ever sleep?
Gene
When responding, please attach my original message
__
Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfi...@codex.cis.upenn.edu
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org
Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266
President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com
3535 Market St., Phila. PA 19104-3389
Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com
3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302
Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology
(ASIS&T) www.asis.org
-Original Message-
From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 2:27 PM
To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org
Subject: Re: What is the threshold for open access Nirvana?
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Garfield, Eugene wrote:
> I think you have introduced a significant distortion to the discussion
> by quoting the figure of 24,000 scientific journals...
> A more realistic figure for journals would be ten to fifteen thousand
> scientific journals putting aside the crucial question of definition.
The 24,000 figure comes from Ulrich's/Bowkers
http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/
and it is not for *scientific* journals only but for all
*peer-reviewed* journals. Open access is not just for scientific
research, but for scholarly research as well.
> Since it has been demonstrated that on line access improves both
readership
> and citation impact we can certainly expect that the vast majority of the
> low impact journals would be well advised to make their journals open
> access. Whether this increases their impact remains to be seen, but
> increased readership or attention seems inevitable.
There are also data showing that download impact is strongly correlated
with later citation impact.
http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr,
Wendy Hall, Stevan Harnad, Donna Bergmark, Carl Lagoze, Open Citation
Linking: The Way Forward. D-Lib Magazine. Volume 8 Number 10. October
2002. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/hitchcock/10hitchcock.html
Hitchcock, Steve; Woukeu, Arouna; Brody, Tim; Carr, Les; Hall,
Wendy and Harnad, Stevan. (2003) Evaluating Citebase, an open
access Web-based citation-ranked search and impact discovery service
http://opcit.eprints.org/evaluation/Citebase-evaluation/evaluation-report.ht
ml
More data on the causal connection between access and impact are being
collected and analyzed. It is hoped that these data will be sufficient
to persuade all researchers (not just scientists!) as well as their
institutions and funders that open-acess provision is optimal for
research -- and that it can be done immediately.
Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003)
Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives:
Improving the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst
making it cheaper and easier. Ariadne 35 (April 2003).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
To join the Forum:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
Post discussion to:
american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Hypermail Archive:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Re: What is the threshold for open access Nirvana?
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Garfield, Eugene wrote:
> I think you have introduced a significant distortion to the discussion
> by quoting the figure of 24,000 scientific journals...
> A more realistic figure for journals would be ten to fifteen thousand
> scientific journals putting aside the crucial question of definition.
The 24,000 figure comes from Ulrich's/Bowkers
http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/
and it is not for *scientific* journals only but for all
*peer-reviewed* journals. Open access is not just for scientific
research, but for scholarly research as well.
> Since it has been demonstrated that on line access improves both readership
> and citation impact we can certainly expect that the vast majority of the
> low impact journals would be well advised to make their journals open
> access. Whether this increases their impact remains to be seen, but
> increased readership or attention seems inevitable.
I know of know evidence that the impact-enhancing effects of open access
are limited to articles in low-access journals!
There are also data showing that download impact is strongly correlated
with later citation impact:
http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php
Hitchcock, Steve, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr,
Wendy Hall, Stevan Harnad, Donna Bergmark, Carl Lagoze, Open Citation
Linking: The Way Forward. D-Lib Magazine. Volume 8 Number 10. October
2002. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october02/hitchcock/10hitchcock.html
Hitchcock, Steve; Woukeu, Arouna; Brody, Tim; Carr, Les; Hall,
Wendy and Harnad, Stevan. (2003) Evaluating Citebase, an open
access Web-based citation-ranked search and impact discovery service
http://opcit.eprints.org/evaluation/Citebase-evaluation/evaluation-report.html
More data on the causal connection between access and impact are being
collected and analyzed. It is hoped that these data will be sufficient
to persuade all researchers (not just scientists!) as well as their
institutions and funders that open-acess provision is optimal for
research -- and that it can be done immediately.
Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003)
Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives:
Improving the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst
making it cheaper and easier. Ariadne 35 (April 2003).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
To join the Forum:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Post discussion to:
american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Hypermail Archive:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
What is the threshold for open access Nirvana?
I have generally avoided discussion in this listserv but I think you have introduced a significant distortion to the discussion by quoting the figure of 24,000 scientific journals which allegedly produce 2,500,000 articles per year. I presume someone has estimated the average of 100 articles per year. A more realistic figure for journals would be ten to fifteen thousand scientific journals putting aside the crucial question of definition. If open access is to become viable it seems to me the key factor is the group of 500 to 1000 highest impact journals which account for a substantial portion of the significant articles which are published and most cited. Unless these journals make it possible for authors to self-archive or to be freely accessible you cannot achieve open access nirvana. One might argue that once e.g. 50% or more of these most important journals are in the fold the breakthrough threshold has been reached. Since it has been demonstrated that on line access improves both readership and citation impact we can certainly expect that the vast majority of the low impact journals would be well advised to make their journals open access. Whether this increases their impact remains to be seen, but increased readership or attention seems inevitable. __ Eugene Garfield, PhD. email: garfi...@codex.cis.upenn.edu home page: www.eugenegarfield.org Tel: 215-243-2205 Fax 215-387-1266 President, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com 3535 Market St., Phila. PA 19104-3389 Chairman Emeritus, ISI www.isinet.com 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3302 Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) www.asis.org -Original Message- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 1:41 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: A Note of Caution About "Reforming the System" > I am a science writer from [deleted]. I am sending you four questions > I have for an article that I am writing about the open access debate in > [deleted]. > > 1 There are approximately 20,000 scientific journals. Currently only a > fraction operates on an open access model. Do you expect the number of > open journals to rise significantly in the next, say, 10 years? The number of journals in question is peer-reviewed research journals (not necessarily only scientific ones) and the current updated estimate of how many of them there in all is 24,000, publishing about 2,500,000 articles annually: http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ About 1000 (under 5%) of the 24,000 journals are Open Access (OA) journals. The rest are Toll Access (TA). http://www.doaj.org/ I expect the number of OA journals to rise in the next 10 years, and I hope it will rise significantly, but I do not believe it will rise anywhere near significantly enough to bring us near 100% on its own. But it is not necessary for all or even most of the remaining 23,000 TA journals to convert to OA for there to be 100% open access to all 2,500,000 articles published annually: Creating, converting and publishing in OA journals is the "golden" road to OA. The "green" road to OA is for those authors who do not have a suitable OA journal in which to publish their article: they can instead publish it in a suitable TA journal but also provide OA to it by self-archiving it in their own institution's OA Eprint Archives: http://software.eprints.org/archives.php http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ Via this dual open-access provision strategy all peer-reviewed journal articles can be made OA very soon. > 2 Some open journals also employ open peer review. What do you think > about it? Are both kinds of openness linked as some proponents argue? They are not linked at all -- and when they are linked in some people's minds, it serves as a deterrent to OA provision. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#7.Pee The goal of the OA movement is to free peer-reviewed research from access-tolls, so as to maximise its usage and impact. The goal is not to free peer-reviewed research from peer-review! Peer-review reform is a completely independent issue, and reform proposals need to be tested and shown to work before being considered for adoption. None have been. They have simply been advocated a priori. That is why associating open-access and "open review" proposals has worked to the detriment of open access. > 3 Is the open access model only a way back to the roots of science as > public knowledge? Or an essential future direction towards a new chance > for interdisciplinarity as cross-disciplinary access to papers is > getting much easier? If it had not been for the true and sizeable costs of Gutenberg-era publication and dissemination, peer-revewed research would never have been sold for payment, as most of the rest of the literature is. The authors of research articles do not w
