Matthew Cockerill wrote: > It's important to be be more specific about the question under investigation > here, surely:
> When critics say 'there is no evidence that researchers WANT open access', > do they mean: > > (1) "There is no evidence that researchers feel that a lack of open access > to the literature in any significant way impedes their professional activity > as researchers." Dear Matthew, Even statement (1) does not really meet the situation. People learn to live with, accept, and work around the difficulties in their evironment. A person might have what by any objective standard would be poor access, and not realize it could be better. This can be well illustrated by Document Delivery: an user pleased with services that deliver an artticle in one week may not realize it can be done the same day at little additional real cost. The valid measure of the desire for new services is experimentation and then trial implementation at increasing scales. OA has done that. Those who have used it want more of it--what else would motivate the discussions? The most dramatic quantitative example is that 95% of the use of articles in both arXiv and journals is from arXiv. I wish to correct my earlier posting: I have thought of a useful survey question for an appropriate population. Users of OA can be asked what they would feel about doing without it. Dr. David Goodman Associate Professor Palmer School of Library and Information Science Long Island University [email protected]
