David Goodman, Kristin Antelman, and Nisa Bakkalbasi, Identifying Open Access Articles: Valid and Invalid Methods, in the Proceedings XXV Annual Charleston Conference: Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition, Charleston, South Carolina, 2005 (and self-archived in dLIST, November 14, 2005).
Abstract: Many versions of an article are now visible on the web, including not only open access (OA), but also paid access, preliminary versions, abstracts, and mere references or citations. The purpose of OA requires not only that the article can be read without the barrier of payment, but also that the reader can find the article to be read without the barrier of extensive searching. We will demonstrate the dubious validity of one prominent system for identifying OA and measuring the amount of OA and the OA Advantage. We will then briefly discuss the remaining alternatives.
(PS: Here's one lesson from this valuable study. Algorithmic methods for ascertaining OA tend to overcount, fooled by false positives such as articles under embargoes, articles with OA to abstracts only, and multiple copies of an article with slightly different titles. When the counts are corrected, then the OA impact advantage --the increase in citation impact correlated with OA-- increases accordingly. Bottom line: In most fields, the OA impact advantage is even larger than we thought.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/15/2005 07:59:00 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.
