This case highlights at least two aspects to the development of open
access. One involves the scientific quest for evidence, and if we
consider arXiv, now nearly two decades old, as a starting point there is
plenty of evidence available and to be investigated. To suggest
otherwise is inadequate. The other is politics and, as with politics
anywhere, can be a dirty business. Sally seems to have got the two confused.
More generally, in particular looking at the repository route to OA,
this is a growing area with new people joining all the time and keen to
learn. It is important they are able to benefit from the best practice
and experience, which is now widely documented, and they should seek it
out. Too often, I fear, they are distracted by the politics, and I
suspect Sally knows that.
Steve Hitchcock
KeepIt Project Manager
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
Web
http://preservation.eprints.org/keepit/
Blog:
http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/keepit/
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/jisckeepit
On 21/07/2009 19:03, Tony Hey wrote:
> I agree. This seems inadequate.
>
> Tony
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
> [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
> Behalf Of David Prosser
> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 8:44 AM
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: FW: OA in High Energy Physics Arxiv Yields Five-Fold Citation
> Advantage
>
> Am I the only person who thinks this just isn't good enough? We need
> either
> a citation or a retraction.
>
> David
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
> [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
> Behalf Of Sally Morris (Morris Associates)
> Sent: 21 July 2009 10:44
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: OA in High Energy Physics Arxiv Yields Five-Fold Citation
> Advantage
>
> Since my informants are no longer at IOP, I can't give you chapter and
> verse, but assure you I'm not making it up (and it was about
> subscriptions).
> I recall a speaker at an ALPSP seminar telling us much the same story for
> London Mathematical Society journals.
>
> Back to the Gentil-Beccot et al article, however - they only looked at
> clickstream data on SPIRES, didn't they? When Kurtz et al
> (http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/095315107779490661 - see Fig 5) looked at ArXiv
> stats directly, together with ADS statistics for access to astrophysics
> journals (which must be an underestimate, since not all readers come in
> via
> ADS), they found that while HE physicists use ArXiv about twice as
> frequently for older papers as do astrophysicists or condensed matter
> scientists (who go directly to the journals). Unless HE physicists have a
> very different pattern of use from astrophysicists, however, it would seem
> that they still preferentially use the journals for older articles.
>
>
> Sally
>
>
> Sally Morris
> Partner, Morris Associates - Publishing Consultancy
>
> South House, The Street
> Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
>
> Tel: +44(0)1903 871286
> Fax: +44(0)8701 202806
> Email: sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
> [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
> Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 20 July 2009 18:04
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: OA in High Energy Physics Arxiv Yields Five-Fold Citation
> Advantage
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Sally
> Morris<sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Stevan is, I'm sure, well aware that IOP at least has claimed that point
> >
> (2)
>
> > is erroneous and that it was misquoted by Swan
> >
>
> No, I am not aware of that at all.
>
> All I am aware of is that IOP said that they had data showing that
> downloads of their online contents declined with the growth of Green
> OA self-archiving.
>
> That point is not in the least disputed, and is not the question at issue.
>
> (Indeed, the recent preprint by Gentil-Beccot et al (2009)
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.5418v1 in HEP, Figure 6, showed quite
> clearly that where there is a Green OA version accessible in Arxiv,
> HEP users prefer to use that, rather than going to the journal site;
> Kurtz et al had some slightly different behavior patterns in
> astrophysics, where usage shifts to the journal version -- probably
> because of ADS -- once it becomes available.)
>
> But the "journal destruction" issue is not about preferred download
> sites, but about subscriptions. And that was what Alma Swan asked APS
> and IOP specifically about: "Has Green OA caused a decline in
> subscriptions?"
>
> And the answer to that question -- from both APS and IOP -- was and is:
> No.
>
> If what you are instead referring to is the hypothesis that a decline
> in downloads will lead to a decline in subscriptions, then this is
> very much the same as the original hypothesis that Green OA will lead
> to a decline in subscriptions:
>
> The objective evidence in both cases is and remains that it has not
> done so, in 18 years of HEP self-archiving, the last 10 of them at
> near 100%.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>
Received on Wed Jul 22 2009 - 11:18:55 BST