RE: Open Access

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

The basic points of this argument in general have been discussed more than
enough, by both me and Peter. There is however one newly emphasized
element that requires attention:

 "using Google to link to publishers' websites."

The actual effect here is a little paradoxical: the provision of these
links appears to be detrimental to user access.  In searching the web,
especially for biomedical academic topics, using either a general web
search engine, or a specialized one like Google Scholar or Scirus, one
will get numerous links to published scientific articles on various sites,
but very few of this links lead directly to the text of the article.

Some do. Some lead to the OA versions of articles, either past the embargo
period, or as authors' posted versions, or in OA journals.

But the majority of links now on the web seem to lead either to pubmed,
pages linking to pubmed, the journal publisher's site, or pages linking to
the journal publisher's site.  Many or most of them are third party
mentions of the articles, by people linking to them from their own page or
blog or class notes or whatever.  To me, the most impressive feature of
Google Scholar is the ability to cluster many of these links. Neither it
nor any technique other than a knowledge of what is likely to be found on
the web and through the library will help a user get to the appropriate
one.
 
For published material the appropriate one would certainly be the
publisher's site if the user is located at a university that has a
subscription or if it is an OA journal. Otherwise it would be the most
authentic available OA version--including versions on pubmedcentral. If
such a version is not available, the choice is between going to pubmed (or
the publisher) to at least read the abstract, or possibly linking directly
to the library document delivery page.

But there is currently no program or search engine that can do this.  I
emphasize that the problem is not in the publishers such as Peter in
making links available; before they had started doing so on a large scale,
the third party links --which no one can control-- were already causing
such problems.

The resulting confusion is likely to lead to poorer overall performance
that using a traditional index--at least in using and index at an
university where the indexed material is available and linked.

I was motivated to write this reply by the experience of the students in
my library school course on computer searching.  I asked them to identify
articles on one of several diseases using each of the key public search
engines. Almost every link they found proved to ultimately be a link to
pubmed, although none of them had realized it. (I asked them to do this
exercise before, not after, the lecture on web searching)

By the time they graduate (or even finish my course) they will know how to
deal with this, as do all librarians with experience in the area, and some
particularly well-qualified users--certainly including anyone likely to be
reading this posting.

Thus, the paradox is explained by the well-known circumstance that too
much information about how to get to a goal causes confusion rather than
enlightenment. One partial solution may be to improve our search tools.
The real answer lies in improving our publishing system, so that all links
lead to the true article.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Peter Banks
Sent: Sun 2/27/2005 7:19 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu; bernies@uillinois.edu
Subject: Re: Open Access
 
Seriously, Mr. Crawford faults our gang for asserting ("with no evidence
at all") that we feel However, if we are going to go by the standard of
evidence-based science, then virtually nothing from the gospel of Open
Access or its prolific proponents, Peter Suber and Rick Johnson, is
evidence-based, either. Please show me the evidence for the central tenet
of the OA crusade: that open access would speed research and enhance
patient care. It sounds logical and may be true, but it is not a
conclusion that emerges from any kind of evidence.

.....

Peter Banks
Publisher
American Diabetes Association
1701 North Beauregard Street
Alexandria, VA 22311
703/299-2033
FAX 703/683-2890
Email: pbanks@diabetes.org