Re: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article in Nature Magazine

From: Chris Beckett <chris_at_scholinfo.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:03:01 -0000

Those looking for some data to inform these discussions could to worse than
look at the report:
"Journals and Scientific Productivity: a case study in immunology and
microbiology" published by the Publishing Research Cosortium and authored by
Ian Rowlands from the Centre of Publishing Research at the University
College London and Rene Olivieri of Blackwell Publishing Limited. That study
covered a wide area, however two pertinent findings were:

1) That when asked to reflect on the level of satisfaction with the journals
system, 60% of researchers in general reported that their access was either
Good (I have access to most of the journals I need) or Excellent (I have
access to all the journals I need). Among immunologists and microbiologists
this rose to 67%.

2) That when asked to reflect on this further 83.7% agreed that compared to
5 years earlier access was either a little or a lot easier.

So it appears that when you do ask researchers what they think they, in
fact, don't tell you that access to research findings severely limits
research. They don^Òt all report that everything is rosy either. But neither
do their opinions match those that are so "painfully obvious" to Leslie Chan
and her co-authors to this post.

I little data goes a long way.

Chris Beckett
Director
Scholarly Information Strategies Ltd
Oxford Innovation Centre
Mill St
Oxford
OX1 0JX
 
T: +44 1865 812058
email: chris_at_scholinfo.com
 
 
Received on Tue Jan 30 2007 - 13:19:08 GMT