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