RE: Open access and impact factor

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Impact factor does not measure the importance of an article. Impact factor
does apply to articles, but only to journals. The impact factor of a
journal is the citations to the journal during the previous 2 years,
divided by the number of articles published in the journal during that
period. It measures not precisely the importance of a journal, but the
rate of citation of the average article in the journal during the yearts
after publication. It thus serves as an approximation to the immediate
importance of a journal, as compared to other journals of the same type in
the same subject. (Citation patterns differ for different types of
journal--e.g. reviews, newletters, etc., and of course for different
subjects.) Thwre is much about a journal that impact factor does not
measure, including the long-term citation frequency of its articles, or
their use in other manner than citation, such as for student papers.

But Rick's discussion does hold if one is considering an open access
journal as compared to a similar conventional journal. During the period
when both types coexist, the open access journals will indeed have a wider
potential readership. Both he and I expect that, assuming equal interest
and quality, this will translate into a wider actual readership, a greater
use, and more frequent citation.  I consider this the strongest and most
basic argument for open access--it will permit more people to use the
journal. It also demonstrates why equivalent conventional and open access
journals in the same subject are unlikely to coexist: the conventional
journal will be at a disadvantage.

Alternatively, if one thinks that the current system meets all potential
needs, then one would not expect this effect, because everyone who would
cite the journal is already able to access it, and is effectively doing
so.  It's this differing prediction that makes the question interesting.

David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From:	Rick Anderson [mailto:rickand@unr.edu]
Sent:	Tue 3/9/2004 5:47 PM
To:	Liblicense-L@Lists. Yale. Edu
Subject: Open access and impact factor

Every time someone uses "enhanced impact factor" as an argument for open
access, a tiny little bell goes off in the back of my head, and this
morning I finally figured out why.  Stop me if this is a naive question or
if I'm fundamentally misunderstanding the argument, but it seems to me
that the purpose of impact factor data is to measure the importance of one
article relative to others.  If the article's impact factor is enhanced by
its free availability to the public (rather than by its intrinsic merits
or its impact on the thinking and research of others), then isn't open
access simply making the impact-factor data less meaningful?

In other words, given two articles of equal merit and potential influence,
one of which is freely available to the public and the other of which is
only available to those who pay, wouldn't we expect that the impact of the
former would be higher than that of the latter?  And if so, how is the
difference between those two impact factors meaningful or useful?

-------------
Rick Anderson
rickand@unr.edu