Re: Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research

From: Sally Morris (ALPSP) <"Sally>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 15:16:54 +0100

Not sure there is any point continuing this but, for what it's worth,
increased citations do not self-evidently equate with increased return on
research investment

Those who have ears to hear have, I think, already heard. I will post no
more on the topic of fantasy economics

Sally

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1903 871 686
Fax: +44 (0)1903 871 457
Email: sally.morris_at_alpsp.org
----- Original Message -----
>
> Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 20:38:27 +0100
> From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> Subject:
> =?iso-8859-1?Q?Re:_Open_access_to_research_worth_=A31.5bn_a_year?=
>
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2005, Sally Morris (ALPSP) wrote:
>
>> The problem lies with Stevan's 50% figure - apparently picked out of =
> the
>> air, and with no factual basis whatsoever - for the increased 'return =
> on
>> investment' if research is OA. I don't find it very convincing to =
> base
>> such sweeping conclusions on a completely unsupported figure
>
> Picked out of the air? I reported (and provided the references and =
> URLs)
> the strong new empirical evidence that open access articles =
> consistently
> receive 50%-250% more citations, comparing always within the same =
> journal
> and same year. Here are some summary data at the discipline level:
>
> In each case the two percentages will be=20
>
> (%OA) the percentage of OA articles among all articles (OA and =
> non-OA)
> in the same journal/year: OA/(OA + nonOA) articles
>
> (%OAc) the percentage gain in citations for OA article compared to
> non-OA articles in the same journal/year: (OA/nonOA) - 100% =
> citations
>
> From: http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/graphes/EtudeImpact.htm
>
> %OA %OAc
> Administration 6% +180%
> Economics 14% +49%
> Education 5% +77%
> Psychology 6% +93%
> Management 8% +68%
> Health Science 5% +57%
> Social Science 14% +126%
> Biology 14% +30%
> (other disciplines: data still being gathered, samples still too =
> small)
> =20
> From: http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/
>
> Astrophysics 24% +114%
> Nuclear/Particle 38% +120%
> (other disciplines: data still being gathered, samples still too =
> small)
>
> I then took a low-end conservative figure for OAc at 50% and applied it
> to the conservative figure of 85% not yet self-archived, to yield 50%
> x 85% x =A33.5.bn =3D =A31.5bn worth of loss of return (in terms of =
> citations)
> on the RCUK's =A33.5.bn annual investment.
>
> As noted, it is not the number of articles published annually (about
> 130,000) that represents the return on the UK's research investment; it
> is how much those articles are used, applied, and built-upon. Research
> published but not used, applied and built-upon is research that may as
> well not have been done or funded at all. The citation counts are
> measures of the degree to which research is used, applied and =
> built-upon --
> "research impact."=20
>
> The UK is losing 1.5bn worth of potential research impact annually
> (on our conservative, low-end estimate) for the 85% of it that it
> is not yet self-archiving (another conservative estimate). The RCUK
> open-access self-archiving mandate -- *if* it is not hobbled into an
> open-ended embargoed-access policy, as the NIH policy proposal was --
> will remedy all of this needless loss of research impact and return on
> the UK public investment in research.
>
> "Please Don't Copy-Cat Clone NIH-12 Non-OA Policy!"
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4307.html
>
> "Open Access vs. NIH Back Access and Nature's Back-Sliding"
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4312.html
>
> Please note that I did not say the UK was getting *no* return on its
> research investment: Even non-OA articles get used and cited -- but
> only by those users whose institutions can afford the toll access to =
> the
> journal version. The empirical 50-250% citation-gap corresponds to the
> loss of the potential research impact from those users who are =
> currently
> denied access. Self-archiving the author's version is done to maximise
> usage, impact, and hence the return on the public investment, by making
> the research accessible to those access-denied would-be users too.=20
>
> But just as toll-access is not open access, and fails to maximise
> research impact, so embargoed access is not open access and fails to
> maximise research impact. The self-archiving must be required to be =
> done
> immediately upon acceptance for publication. To allow delays of 3, 6,
> 12 months or more would simply be to return to the needless loss in the
> return on the public investment in research that the RCUK =
> self-archiving
> mandate is intended to remedy.
>
> So: No embargo, of any length at all. What can be allowed instead --
> with some loss in efficiency, but no significant loss in impact -- is
> the immediate, required self-archiving of the full text and the =
> metadata
> (author, title, journal, date, etc.), with the access-setting for the
> full-text to "open access" being merely encouraged, but not required. =
> If
> an author prefers to set access to the full-text as =
> "institution-internal"
> access only, the metadata are still visible and searchable to all,
> and the full-text can still be harvested and inverted by google without
> displaying it (as google already does with books).
>
> Would-be users can then email the author for an eprint: Somewhat slower
> and less efficient than direct click-through access, but good enough.
> As over 90% of journals are already green on self-archiving, fewer than
> 10% of articles will suffer from this inconvenience, it will be bad
> press for the non-green publishers, and the authors will soon tire of
> doing the keystrokes to keep emailing the eprint -- and will simply do
> the last keystroke, switching access from "institutional" to "open."
>
> http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
> =20
> Stevan Harnad
Received on Sat Sep 24 2005 - 15:36:15 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Dec 10 2010 - 19:48:02 GMT