More on Open Access citations

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

The question of whether or not Open Access leads to more 
citations has come up again, this time in listmember Phil Davis"s 
blog post:

http://bit.ly/gHpQF0

Since OA is as much a theological debate as it is a property of 
one kind of publishing, it is hard to have reasoned discussion on 
the topic.  Davis is a data hog of the first order and has to be 
taken seriously.  The notion that Davis is somehow "anti-Open 
Access" is nonesense.

Davis and I don"t agree about this matter on what I would call 
temperamental grounds. I am myself uneasy with what I see as 
excessive quantification, asking numbers to do what only human 
judgment can.  I wrote about this some time ago: 
http://bit.ly/8z1yMM.  Citation analysis gets you to the front 
door, but it doesn"t let you inside.

Most people who disagree with Davis, however, also disagree with 
me. So this is not a binary argument.  I remain puzzled that for 
all the benefits of OA publishing, advocates continue to cling to 
two arguments that are simply not true, that it lowers costs (to 
whom?) and that it increases scientific impact (no evidence). 
Why not discuss OA for what it does remarkably well?  It provides 
a vehicle for a much broader display of research materials, lends 
itself to emerging data-mining techniques, enables individual 
authors to take greater control of the publication of their own 
work, and provides a public venue for work that is highly 
specialized and not likely to find a market by traditional means. 
By these standards, OA is a home run.

Joe Esposito