Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Eberhard R. Hilf wrote: the physics ArXiv has a linear increase of the number of papers put in per month, this gives a quadratic acceleration of the total content (growth rate of Data base), not linear. Maybe so. But slide 25 of http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.htm (slide 25) still looks pretty linear to me. And it looks as if 100% was not only *not* reached at this rate 10 years after self-archiving started in physics in 1991, but it won't be reached for another 10 years or so... Total amount by now may be at 10-15 % of all papers in physics. (10-15% of the annual output, I assume.) I count that as appallingly low, considering what is so easily feasible (though stunningly higher than any other field!)... Linear growth of input rate means the number of physicists and fields using it rises, while in each field (and physicist) a saturation is reached after a first exponential individual rise. Interesting, but the relevant target is 100% of the annual output of physics (and all other disciplines) -- yesterday! Never there will be a saturation such that all papers will go this way, since in different fields culture and habits and requirements are different. -- I couldn't follow that: Never 100%? Even at this rate? I can't imagine why not. Cultural differences? Do any of the cultural differences between fields correspond to indifference or antipathy toward research impact -- toward having their research output read, used, cited? Unless the cultural differences are specifically with respect to that, then they are irrelevant. Requirement differences? Are any universities or research funders indifferent or averse to their researchers' impact? Unless they are, any remaining requirement-differences are irrelevant. Habit differences? Well, yes, there are certainly those. But that is just what this is all about *changing*! Are any field's current access/impact practises optimal? or unalterable for some reason? If not, then habit-change is (and always has been) the target! And the point is that the rate of habit-change is still far too slow -- relative to what is not only possible, but easily done, and immensely beneficial to research, researchers, etc. -- in all disciplines. [That is why it is e.g. best, to keep letter distribution by horses at a remote island (Juist) alive since the medieval times]. That I really couldn't follow! If you mean paper is still a useful back-up, sure. But we're not talking about back-up. We are talking about open online access, which has been reachable for at least a decade and a half now, and OAI-interoperably since 1999. What more is the research cavalry waiting for, before it will stoop to drink? Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 99 00 01 02 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html or http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
Re: How to compare research impact of toll- vs. open-access research
Fully agree that comparisons must be relevant. Let's audit the download claims of all publishers. And only those that concern articles younger than 2 years, say, in order to avoid comparing new material with ancient articles that are hardly ever downloaded. One particular characteristic of open access articles is that any audited downloads form the publisher's site will always be understating reality. This is in the nature or open access: the articles can be -- and are -- stored at and downloaded from multiple repositories, large and small. BioMed Central does not count every ornament associated with a file and I can't quite believe that Elsevier does that, either. Jan Velterop BioMed Central -Original Message- From: Albert Henderson [mailto:chess...@compuserve.com] Sent: 08 September 2003 23:21 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: How to compare research impact of toll- vs. open-access research on Sat, 6 Sep 2003 Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote The following data posted by Peter Suber in http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html indicate that open-access articles (from BioMedCentral) average at least 89 times as many downloads as toll-access articles (from Elsevier). (The 89 is probably an undercount, because it does not include PubMedCentral downloads.) PETER SUBER: Elsevier has put some PowerPoint slides on the web summarizing its interim results for 2003. Slide #16 shows that there were 4.5 million full-text articles in ScienceDirect on June 30, 2003, and slide #15 shows that there were 124 million article downloads in the 12 months preceding that date. This means that its articles were downloaded an average of 28 times each during the past year. http://www.investis.com/reedelsevierplc/data/interims2003b.ppt For comparison I asked Jan Velterop of BioMed Central what the download figure was for BMC articles during the same time period. He reports that the average is about 2500 per year, which doesn't count downloads of the same articles from PubMed Central. This is 89 times the Elsevier number. I don't believe this 'data' can be taken seriously. There is no standard for counting 'downloads.' One party will count every ornament associated with a file while the next may count only files. Comparisons must be relevant. BioMedCentral's list of journals bears only a faint resemblance to Elsevier's. The Sigmetric community went through considerable agony over 'fairness' when the only source was ISI. Now you want to compare data from two unrelated sources? Let's examine the data more closely before jumping to wishful conclusions. This is supposed to be about science. Best wishes, Albert Henderson Pres., Chess Combination Inc. POB 2423 Bridgeport CT 06608-0423 a...@chessnic.com Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY. This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information on a proactive email security service working around the clock, around the globe, visit http://www.messagelabs.com
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
?iso-8859-1?Q?Hugo_Fjelsted_Alr=F8e?= writes By community-building, I mean that such archives can contribute to the creation or development of the identity of a scholarly community in research areas that go across the established disciplinary matrix of the university world. This crucial if self-archiving is to take off. I know the same thing can in principle be done with OAI-compliant university archives and a disciplinary hub or research area hub, and in ten years time, we may not be able to tell the difference. But today, it is still not quite the same thing. Correct. This is a point that is too many times overlooked. RePEc (see http://repec.org) prodives an example for this in the area of economics. RePEc archives are not OAI compliant but an OAI gateway export all the RePEc data. Many RePEc services are in the business of community building. The crucial part, though, it RePEc's author registration service. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org from Espoo, Finlandhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
