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Re: PLoS Financial Analysis

Joe,

Something like the experiment you propose has been done. See:

Open access and openly accessible: a study of scientific publications shared via the internet
Jonathan D Wren
BMJ 2005;330:1128 (14 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.38422.611736.E0 (published 12 April 2005) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7500/1128

The chart that encapsulates the results best might be this one:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content-nw/full/330/7500/1128/FIG2

Basically, the more highly-ranked the journal, the more likely its research is to be available outside the journal site, with rates approaching 50% for journals such as Science and Cell, but lower for most others. Or, as stated in the abstract: "Decentralised sharing of scientific reprints through the internet creates a degree of de facto open access that, though highly incomplete in its coverage, is none the less biased towards publications of higher popular demand."

---------
John Sack
Director, HighWire Press, Stanford University
650-723-0192, sack@stanford.edu


--On Friday, June 30, 2006 8:12 PM -0400 Joseph Esposito
<espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

Here is an experiment worth doing. Take the highest-ranked articles that are at least one year old from each major journals publisher and Google around. How many can be found in some form (preprints, working papers, final papers, etc.)? And maybe you can get the assistance of the U.S. intelligence service to identify all the attachments to private emails that one researcher sends to another. This is not the OA of the advocates; nothing here Varmus or even Harnad would much care for. This is Shawn Fanning's OA: Napster, peer-to-peer, no central authority. OA is a fait accomplis. Please don't shoot the messenger.

Joe Esposito