Re: Roundtable Press Release (Access to Research Results)

From: Marc Couture <jaamcouture_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:25:22 -0500

On 17-Jan-10, at 2:39 PM, Sally Morris wrote:

>
> Those who look beyond the abstract will find that we did, indeed, ask
> where they looked for articles
>

As one who has indeed looked beyond the abstract (read the whole paper
in fact), I have some difficulty understanding what the authors mean
precisely by "using", "accessing" "identifying" self-archived
articles, as well as by "whenever possible", so that it is somewhat
difficult to sort out the various numbers and percentages stated in p.
230-231, including those quoted in previous posts.

Perhaps the exact wording of the questionnaire would help clarify the
issue, but unfortunately the DOI-based hyperlink to Appendix 1: Text
of survey (http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/2009318) don't seem to work.

What I think I can deduce is that close to 50% of those who didn't
have access to the published version didn't even look for a
self-archived version (but I'm not sure if I my reasoning is right,
because the paper refers to those who "did not [never?] use
self-archived versions"). And we don't know how often those who did
look for such a version were able to find one.

What I found most interesting though - and more useful, from an
OA-advocacy standpoint - is the fact that there was much confusion
among participants about what is a repository, and whether an article
(or journal) is OA or not.

As to the latter issue, one can argue that institutionally-provided
Internet access and use of proxies do blur the distinction. For
instance, I have no obvious way to determine if Morris & Thorn's
paper, which I freely accessed from home (with proxy) on the publisher
website, is OA or not (a Google Scholar search seems to indicate it
isn't).

Marc Couture
Received on Mon Jan 18 2010 - 17:29:55 GMT

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