One might even wonder if permitting researchers to make a copy of their work 
available in a repository could entail an uplift of downloads at the 
publisher’s web site, thus leading librarians to subscribe:
http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/20120618_D5_3_PEER_Usage_Study_RCT.pdf

Serge



Le 22/10/2015 11:59, « David Prosser » 
<david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk<mailto:david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk>> a écrit :

If the question is ‘Is there any evidence showing a correlation between embargo 
length and subscription cancellations?’ then the answer is clearly ‘no’.

If the question is ‘Is there a disconnect between library behaviour and survey 
results?’ then the answer is clearly ‘yes’.

Yes different journals have different usage half-lives and yes journal usage is 
a factor in libraries’ purchasing decisions but nobody has shown any evidence 
that links usage, half-lives, and cancellations.  This despite the ten years of 
experience of setting embargoes that Alicia tells us about - if they evidence 
exists then show it to us.

Let’s remind ourselves of how this discussion started - Danny wrote 'There is 
no evidence that permitting researchers to make a copy of their work available 
in a repository results in journal subscriptions being cancelled. None.’  
Despite Alicia’s intervention that statement still stands.

David



On 21 Oct 2015, at 16:05, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) 
<a.w...@elsevier.com<mailto:a.w...@elsevier.com>> wrote:

Hi there -
Great to see engagement on this topic which is of shared strategic interest for 
librarians and publishers!  My original posting was to push back on the idea 
that there is 'no evidence', and I'm pleased to see acknowledgment that there 
is evidence and some discussion about whether or not it is sufficient or if 
more is needed.
Publishers, including Elsevier, have c. 20 years of usage data and c. 10 years 
of experience of setting embargos and looking at the impact of various sharing 
behaviors.  We're not guessing or crying wolf or 'ignoring reality' when we set 
embargo periods.  Some impacts of short embargos can take time to be felt. An 
interesting perspective on why that might be the cases is implicit in a study 
the AAP commissioned from Phil Davis.  You can see the full study for yourself 
at 
http://publishers.org/sites/default/files/uploads/PSP/journalusagehalflife.pdf 
but let me quote the first two sentences of the abstract for everyone here:  
"An analysis of article downloads from 2,812 academic and professional journals 
published by 13 presses in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities 
reveals extensive usage of articles years after publication. Measuring usage 
half-life - the median age of articles downloaded from a publisher's website - 
just 3% of journals had a half-lives shorter than 12-months".
It is also a fact that libraries look at usage figures, and this is one factor 
in their purchasing decisions.  Why else would services such as COUNTER exist?  
See http://www.projectcounter.org/  Again, to quote from the COUNTER website: 
"Launched in March 2002, COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic 
Resources) is an international initiative serving librarians, publishers and 
intermediaries by setting standards that facilitate the recording and reporting 
of online usage statistics in a consistent, credible and compatible way.  Later 
on that page the benefits of COUNTER to librarians and publishers are explained 
in this way:
"Librarians are able to compare usage statistics from different vendors; derive 
useful metrics such as cost-per-use; make better-informed purchasing decisions; 
plan infrastructure more effectively.
Publishers and intermediaries are able to: provide data to customers in a 
format they want; compare the relative usage of different delivery channels; 
aggregate data for customers using multiple delivery channels; learn more about 
genuine usage patterns."
Might these data on usage be leveraged in some way to shed light?  I don't know 
if someone from COUNTER is on this listserv, but if so would be interested to 
hear their perspective.
Anyway, green OA is important for us all and good to see more discussion.  
There is not a simple interplay between usage and embargo setting and 
subscription decisions.  A publisher who sets a 6 month embargo period will not 
necessarily lose subscriptions, or at least not lose them quickly.  There are 
at least a couple of reasons for this.  First, for exceptional (not typical!) 
journals a six month embargo can be made to work.  We have around 10 titles 
with 6 month embargo periods, in really fast moving areas of science where 
there is a lot of news-breaking content, and we believe these are sustainable 
(but of course we will continue to monitor and review).  Second, the impact on 
subscriptions can be rather slow - some of the specific examples cited in my 
original posts are titles that lost their subscriptions over 5 or 10 years and 
where the publishers with hindsight understood the long term impact of their 
embargo decisions.
With kind wishes,
Alicia
P.S.  I am struck by how little discussion there has been (at least so far!) on 
this list about the review of the UK national OA policy implementation which 
was commissioned by Universities UK on behalf of the Open Access Coordination 
Group.  It covers both gold and green OA:  
http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/PolicyAnalysis/ResearchInnovation/Pages/UUKOpenAccessCoordinationGroup.aspx
-----Original Message-----
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org> 
[mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Dana Roth
Sent: 18 October 2015 20:50
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: BLOG: Unlocking Research 'Half-life is half the story'
There could be a problem trying to extrapolate from unverified data ...
I suspect that many of the 'freely available after 6 months' journals are 
either very low cost <$1K/year, non-profit society journals, journals in a 
larger package, or a combination of these.
Perhaps David would take a look the 30 titles and provide some additional data?
Dana L. Roth
Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32
1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125
626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540
dzr...@library.caltech.edu<mailto:dzr...@library.caltech.edu>
http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm
________________________________________
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org> 
[goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org>] on behalf of David 
Prosser [david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk<mailto:david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk>]
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2015 5:38 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: ?spam? Re: BLOG: Unlocking Research 'Half-life is half the 
story'
It is well known that what people do and what they say they will do can be 
different.  If you find that real-life behaviour and reported behaviour are 
different then you have to look at where the problems lie with the surveys.
There are a number of journals that make papers freely available in less than 
12 months.  For example, almost 30 journals hosted by HighWire make papers 
freely available after 6 months:
http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
If it was true that almost half of subscribers will cancel if the embargo is 
less than 12 months then how are these 6-month journals surviving?  Their 
subscription base should be massively reduced.  If they really are 
haemorrhaging subscribers surely we would now about it.
So we have surveys telling us one thing, reality telling us something else.  
Alicia would have us focus on the surveys and ignore reality.  I would rather 
we worked with real behaviour.
David
On 16 Oct 2015, at 16:30, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) 
<a.w...@elsevier.com<mailto:a.w...@elsevier.com><mailto:a.w...@elsevier.com>> 
wrote:
Hi Danny -
Publishers support sustainable approaches to Green OA as well as Gold OA - 
indeed that was the focus of the panel discussion at the STM conference.
For articles that are published under the subscription business model, when and 
how they are made available for free (on a wide array of platforms - 
institutional repositories are one important example of these platforms) does 
make a difference.  In my experience publishers are both evidence-based and 
thoughtful about how they set embargo periods and so forth.
The evidence that is factored into decision-making currently includes:
1. Usage Evidence
In 2014 Phil Davis published a study commissioned by the Association of 
American Publishers which demonstrates that journal article usage varies widely 
within and across disciplines, and that only 3% of of journals have half-lives 
of 12 months or less. Health sciences articles have the shortest median 
half-life of the journals analyzed, but still more than 50% of health science 
journals have usage half-lives longer than 24 months. In fields with the 
longest usage half-lives, including mathematics and the humanities, more than 
50% of the journals have usage half-lives longer than 48 months. See 
http://publishers.org/sites/default/files/uploads/PSP/journalusagehalflife.pdf
2. Evidence for the link between embargos, usage and cancellations
A 2012 study by ALPSP was a simple one-question survey: "If the (majority of) 
content of research journals was freely available within 6 months of 
publication, would you continue to subscribe?" The results "indicate that only 
56% of those subscribing to journals in the STM field would definitely continue 
to subscribe. In AHSS, this drops to just 35%. See 
http://www.alpsp.org/ebusiness/AboutALPSP/ALPSPStatements/Statementdetails.aspx?ID=407
  This 2012 study builds on earlier, more nuanced, studies undertaken for ALPSP 
in 2009 and 2006. The 2009 ALPSP study (see the next to last bullet) found that 
"overall usage" is the prime factor that librarians use in making cancellation 
decisions. The 2006 ALPSP study (see points 7 and 8) found that "the length of 
any embargo" would be the most important factor in making cancellation 
decisions.
A 2006 PRC study (see pages 1-3) shows that a significant number of librarians 
are likely to substitute green OA materials for subscribed resources, given 
certain levels of reliability, peer review and currency of the information 
available. With a 24 month embargo, 50% of librarians would use the green OA 
material over paying for subscriptions, and 70% would use the green OA material 
if it is available after 6 months. See 
http://publishingresearchconsortium.com/index.php/115-prc-projects/research-reports/self-archiving-and-journal-subscriptions-research-report/145-self-archiving-and-journal-subscriptions-co-existence-or-competition-an-international-survey-of-librarians-preferences
3. Experiences of other journals
For example, the Journal of Clinical Investigation which went open access with 
a 0 month embargo in 1996 and lost c. 40% of institutional subscriptions over 
time. The journal was forced to return to the subscription model in 2009, see 
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/02/26/end-of-free-access/  Other 
examples that spring to mind are the Annals of Mathematics, the Journal of 
Dental Research, the American Journal of Pathology, and Genetics.
With kind wishes,
Alicia
Dr Alicia Wise
Director of Access and Policy
Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: 
a.w...@elsevier.com<mailto:a.w...@elsevier.com><mailto:a.w...@elsevier.com>
Twitter: @wisealic
From: 
goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org><mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org>
 [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Danny Kingsley
Sent: 16 October 2015 12:29
To: goal@eprints.org<mailto:goal@eprints.org><mailto:goal@eprints.org>
Subject: [GOAL] BLOG: Unlocking Research 'Half-life is half the story'
<apologies for cross posting>
Hello all,
You may be interested in the latest Unlocking Research blog: 'Half-life is half 
the story' https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=331
<snip>
This week the STM Frankfurt 
Conference<http://www.stm-assoc.org/events/frankfurt-conference-2015/> was told 
that a shift away from gold Open Access towards green would mean some 
publishers would not be 'viable' according to a story in The 
Bookseller<http://www.thebookseller.com/news/green-oa-will-hit-publishers-314667>.
 The argument was that support for green OA in the US and China would mean some 
publishers will collapse and the community will 'regret it'.
It is not surprising that the publishing industry is worried about a move away 
from gold OA policies. They have proved extraordinarily lucrative in the UK 
with Wiley and Elsevier each pocketing an extra £2 
million<https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/publishers-share-10m-in-apc-payments/2019685.article>
 thanks to the RCUK block grant funds to support the RCUK policy on Open 
Access<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/>.
But let's get something straight. There is no evidence that permitting 
researchers to make a copy of their work available in a repository results in 
journal subscriptions being cancelled. None.
</snip>
--
Dr Danny Kingsley
Head of Scholarly Communications
Cambridge University Library
West Road, Cambridge CB39DR
P: +44 (0) 1223 747 437
M: +44 (0) 7711 500 564
E: da...@cam.ac.uk<mailto:da...@cam.ac.uk><mailto:da...@cam.ac.uk>
T: @dannykay68
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3636-5939
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Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, 
Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084, Registered in 
England and Wales.
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