RE: Essay on article metrics

[David Prosser <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

I'm confused, why was this not tiresome when Joe was promoting 
Phil Davis' comments questioning the methodology (so non-tiresome 
Joe was suggesting there could be a book in it), but suddenly 
tiresome when the authors respond and defend their methodology?

It is entirely reasonable to say that people shouldn't care about 
downloads and citations.  It is also entirely reasonable to 
suggest that downloads and citations are not the whole story when 
it comes to "value".  But those that are interested in downloads 
and citations have, quite rightly, called for evidence that OA 
increases (on average) downloads and citations.  Phil's work 
appears to show that OA increases average downloads, that of 
Gargouri et al appears to show that OA increases average 
citations.  Evidence was asked for, evidence was produced.  Is 
that really so unreasonable?

David

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu]
On Behalf Of Joseph Esposito
Sent: 11 January 2010 23:04
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Essay on article metrics

This is tiresome.

There is no OA Advantage not because of the merits or limitations 
of OA but because all these purported advantages and 
disadvantages are based on the pseudo-science of quantifying what 
is not entirely quantifiable.  Citation count or page views or 
downloads or whatever are useful *approximations* of some 
qualities of materials, but an approximation is not the same 
thing as the underlying value, which is subject to various 
interpretations.  You might as well base a college admissions 
program on the sole criterion that a math score of 710 is 
unquestionably better than one of 700.

These comments apply to subscription-based publishing as well as
to OA publications.

I know the fashion is to shut down humanities departments or
simply to starve them (or at least all of the adjuncts who work
there) to death, but could we not reintroduce some judgment into
this discussion?  And while we are at it, how about a simple
experiment:  those who wish to publish with an OA service do so,
and those who don't, don't.

Joe Esposito