Re: More on Open Access citations

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

The absolutely fascinating thing about the paper by Mark McCabe 
and Chris Snyder is that it appears to show that there is, in 
general, no citation advantage accruing to online content.  Not 
just to online, open access content, but to any online content. 
Phil makes this clear in the title of his blog post, and it is 
only here that the subject is narrowed somewhat to only open 
access citations.

If McCabe and Snyder are right then the widening of access 
through big deals, third-party intermediates, and open access has 
made no difference to citation rates.  Are access and citations 
so disconnected that an increase in one has no effect on the 
other?   Is it really the case that none of the business models 
for online access have increased citations?  Intriguing.

(There is a JSTOR twist in the results; read the paper for 
details.)

David

On 9 Feb 2011, at 00:20, Joseph Esposito wrote:
> 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
>