SOAP Survey Delivers Slippery Results

[Philip Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

In today's Scholarly Kitchen, I critique the survey of scientists 
conducted by the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) group. 
see:

SOAP Survey Requires Clean Interpretation of Data:

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/02/02/soap-open-access-survey/

"Given the scores of individuals involved in creating, promoting 
and analyzing this survey, and the voluntary participation of 
40,000 scientists, the researchers missed an great opportunity to 
contribute valid and generalizable details to a field that is 
woefully lacking of objective data.  While one should not dismiss 
the SOAP survey out of hand, we should be critical of what it 
measures, what the data mean, and how we can conduct better 
surveys in the future."