Reply to Heather Morrison

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@worldnet.att.net>]

Ms. Morrison said:

Restricting access probably does distort the potential for impact/usage at
least as much as either the big deal or open access.  Or, to put in
another way, it makes sense that the accessibility of scholarly
information would have an impact on its potential impact/usage.  One might
argue that open access is the least distorting model.  That is, if all
scholarly information is readily available, then impact/usage should be as
closely related to the actual value of the information as it can be in
this imperfect world.

JE:  Ideally, yes:  this would be a friction-free world.  The question is
whether networks will admit friction or drive it into the dustbin of
legacy media--or whether networks will in fact increase friction by making
the administration of a growing number of connected nodes more and more
onerous. I'm a Hobbesian (this week), so you know which case I support.  
It seems probable to me that even (especially?) in a world of open access,
there will be various methods to press one article over others to readers'
attention, just as search-engine-optimization companies develop mechanisms
to raise a Web site's ranking on Google.  This "skewing" of attention is
what in the legacy world is called creating a market, the core function of
what in pre-revolutionary days was called publishing.

Joe Esposito