Re: Surveys, self-archiving, and what authors want to do

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

That's one of the fallacies of Swan's argument, which mostly cavils at
Anthony Watkinson's thoughtful communication.  The more fundamental issue
is that the survey did not assess the single most important measurement,
which is how successful institutional repositories have been thus far in
getting authors to upload papers.  Ask around and see what you find out.  
I am sure there are exceptions, but what I have found is that for the most
part, the people who have set up the IRs are disappointed by the rate of
acceptance by the faculty.  I'm not surprised:  the IRs are not being
marketed effectively.  I would be very interested to see the marketing
budgets (and the strategy) for IRs.  As a rule of thumb in the commercial
world, marketing costs 2-3 times the cost of product development for a new
service.  What universities are spending that kind of money and how are
they spending it?  Markets have to be created, and that costs money.

Joe Esposito

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 18:42:00 EST, cmorgan@wiley.co.uk wrote:

> Alma Swan may claim that the survey is rigorous and meaningful, but its
> objectivity is rather undermined by the following introductory sentence:
> 
> "Studies show that open access increases the impact of - and number of
> citations to - work made accessible in this way."
> 
> Even if we set aside the contentiousness of the statement, it surely has
> no place in an introduction to an objective survey of authors' attitudes
> since it is leading the witness.
> 
> If you are asking for someone's opinion about something, surely you don't
> start off by making any claims as to the positive (or negative) aspects of
> the issue that you are surveying?
> 
> Cliff Morgan
> 
> Chair, Serial Publishers Executive
> Academic and Professional Division of the Publishers Association
> 
> ___
> Alma Swan wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 2. Professor Watkinson's phraseology implies that KPL has carried out
> numerous surveys of dubious merit. In fact, KPL has only published the
> results of ONE survey on open access so far, which was indeed based on a
> small sample, but a valid one, and I would hope its merit is considerable.
> However, for information, I am now analysing the results of a new,
> current, survey on self-archiving that we have conducted, and which has a
> sample of more than 1200. The report will be published in the spring.
> 
> 3. Our new, bigger-sample survey shows that the percentage of academics
> who would willingly self-archive if required to do so by their employers
> or funders is greater than previously found.
> 
> <snip>