Open Access Allows All The Cream to Rise to the Top

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:10:00 -0500

      Feed: D-Lib Magazine
      Posted on: Monday, November 17, 2008 8:46 AM
      Author: D-Lib Magazine
      Subject: Electronic Journals and Changes in Scholarly
      Article Seeking and Reading Patterns
       http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/november2008-tenopir

      "A recent article by James Evans in Science is being
      widely discussed in the science and publishing
      communities. Evans' in-depth research on citations in
      over 34 million articles and how online availability
      affects citing patterns, found that the more issues of a
      journal that are available online, the fewer numbers of
      articles in that journal are cited. If the journal is
      available for free online, it is cited even less. Evans
      attributes this phenomenon to more searching and less
      browsing (which he feels eliminates marginally relevant
      articles that may have been found by browsing) and the
      ability to follow links to see what other authors are
      citing. He concludes that electronic journals have
      resulted in a narrowing of scientific citation patterns.
      This brief article expands on the evidence cited by Evans
      based on the authors' ongoing surveys of academic readers
      of scholarly articles. Reading patterns and citation
      patterns differ, as faculty read many more articles than
      they ultimately cite and read for many purposes in
      addition to research and writing. The number of articles
      read has steadily increased over the last three decades,
      so the actual numbers of articles found by browsing has
      not decreased much, even though the percentage of
      readings found by searching has increased. Readings from
      library-provided electronic journals has increased
      substantially, while readings of older articles have
      recently increased somewhat. Ironically, reading patterns
      have broadened with electronic journals at the same time
      citing patterns have narrowed.."

      Article by Carol Tenopir, University of Tennessee; and
      Donald W. King, University of North Carolina at Chapel
      Hill.



Tenopir & King's confirmation of the finding (of Kurtz and others) --
that as more articles become accessible, more articles are indeed
accessed (and read), but fewer articles are cited (and those are
cited more) -- is best explained by the increased selectivity made
possible by that increased accessibility:

The Seglen "skewness" effect is that the top 20% of articles receive
80% of all citations. It is probably safe to say that although there
are no doubt some bandwagon and copycat effects contributing to the
Seglen effect, overall the 20/80 rule probably reflects the fact that
the best work gets cited most (skewing citations toward the top of
the quality distribution).

So when more researchers have access to more (or, conversely, are
denied access to less), they are more likely to access the best work,
and the best work thereby increases its likelihood of being cited,
whereas the rest correspondingly decreases its likelihood of being
cited. Another way to put it is that there is a levelling of the
playing field: Any advantage that the lower 80% had enjoyed from mere
accessibility in the toll-access lottery is eliminated, and with it
any handicap the top 20% suffered from inaccessibility in the
toll-access lottery is eliminated too. Open Access (OA) allows all
the cream to rise to the top; accessibility is no longer a constraint
on what to cite.

(I would like to point out also that this "quality selectivity" on
the part users -- rather than self-selection on the part of authors
-- is likely to be the main contributor to the citation advantage of
Open Access articles over Toll Access articles. It follows from the
20/80 rule that whatever quality-selectivity there is on the part of
users will be enjoyed mostly by the top 20% of articles. There is no
doubt at all that the top authors are more likely to make their
articles OA, and that the top articles are more likely to be made OA,
but one should ask oneself why that should be the case, if there were
no benefits [or the only benefit were more readers, but fewer
citations!]: One of the reasons the top articles are more likely to
be made OA is precisely that they are also more likely to be cited
more if they are made OA!)

Stevan Harnad
Received on Wed Nov 19 2008 - 22:32:15 GMT

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