http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=5710
At OAI5 a series of very interesting presentations on metrics, together, provide an outlook on the kinds of services that could be developed on the basis of open access to research articles and data. The focus was on usage statistics and impact metrics.
Slides from presentations by Frank Scholze, Johan Bollen and Les Carr are available online. I recommend a download:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceTimeTable.py?confId=5710&showDate=18-April-2007&showSession=14&detailLevel=contribution&viewMode=plain
Statistics have been underutilised to further open access. A parallel issue is how citation metrics have been locked up through ISI and privilege closed access journals. However, potentially, OA metrics could be much more varied (and better).
Presentations highlighted the need:
- To identify which kinds of stats would be valuable to different groups, such as authors, readers, faculty promotion committees, research evaluation committees, libraries or repository management
- For international standardization
- To ensure that aggregation, data mining and metrics are collected and analysed in a framework that renders them suitable to providing services.
For a moment I would like to focus on services for authors, particularly for junior scholars. This would promote the uptake of OA to pre-prints and post-prints among the younger generation of scholars.
Junior authors are very much dependent on ^Ñrecognition^Ò of their peers and elders to further their research programmes and careers. Consider the simple metrics that the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com) or Research Papers in Economics (www.repec.org) provide through statistics on abstract views, full-text downloads, subject specific rankings and an overall world ranking (of all authors and papers).
A publication in the American Economic Review is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the ultimate accolade for an economist. But short of that, one or more of your (working) papers in a Top 10 list of a subject area is a strong argument in favour of your work. An overall rising ranking (as author, of papers) will support your career. But the ^Ñranking^Ò has to be recognised and reinforced: SSRN and RePEc are large epistemic networks, in which the papers of junior scholars compete for attention with those of the most senior and prominent scholars. It is also vital that there is only one (authoritative) version of the paper that ^Ñcollects^Ò all the metrics.
Service provision is about benefits. The future of usage statistics and impact metrics outlined by the OAI5 speakers indicates that the time has come for OA services that will be so attractive that readers, authors and users will find them irresistible.
Chris Armbruster
Winner - writing competition 'Access to Knowledge'
Yale Law Information Society Project and the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy
http://research.yale.edu/isp/eventsa2k2.html
"Cyberscience and the Knowledge-based Economy, Open Access and Trade Publishing: From Contradiction to Compatibility with Nonexclusive Copyright Licensing"
http://ssrn.com/abstract=938119
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 17:01:29 BST