The conventional wisdom among Open Access advocates and librarians is that articles that are freely available will be read more, downloaded more, and by extension cited more. It seems like a no-brainer: take down the walls and people will come in. Indeed, a number of studies published in recent years have claimed to confirm that assumption. But a new paper by Philip Davis and his colleagues at Cornell University suggests that the citation effect may not be there after all (Davis et al. 2008).
We desperately need objective, quantifiable evidence that OA does what it claims to do, rather than taking these things as a matter of near-religious faith. Only with hard evidence can we refute publisher claims that OA is evil, destructive, and unnecessary, and demonstrate to all stakeholders that OA is worthy of further investment and advocacy....
Any study that calls into question the efficacy of OA will be eagerly seized upon by the opponents of OA and used to attack further efforts and policies that are now, after many years, beginning to bear fruit. We have already seen some publishers set up little-used author-pays OA options as a straw man to "prove" that authors don't care about OA and don't want to pay for it. The last thing we need is to give the naysayers more ammunition....
Studying the effect of OA in the scholarly communication environment is devilishly tricky. There are many variables and unknowns that can't be quantified or controlled....
Critics have been quick to point out that the time frame for Davis' study was short, and that the articles have not been out long enough for their full citation impact to be apparent. Davis has indicated that his team will continue to track the articles for several more years....
Comment. With one exception, good points all. The exception is this sentence: "We desperately need objective, quantifiable evidence that OA does what it claims to do, rather than taking these things as a matter of near-religious faith." This leaves the impression that previous claims that OA boosts citation impact are taken on faith, not grounded in evidence. Flaxbart seems unaware of the dozens of evidence-based studies concluding that OA does indeed boost citation impact. He doesn't mention them in his piece and or cite them in his reference list. But he does note, correctly, that "[s]tudying the effect of OA in the scholarly communication environment is devilishly tricky." We're seeing multiple evidence-based investigations taking on that devilish complexity. As in any other domain, the investigators quarrel a bit about their methods and interpretations of the data. But the debate is definitely evidence v. evidence, not evidence v. faith.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/29/2008 11:35:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
