Re: Open access and impact factor

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Makes sense to me, Michelle!

Restricting access probably does distort the potential for impact/usage at
least as much as either the big deal or open access.  Or, to put in
another way, it makes sense that the accessibility of scholarly
information would have an impact on its potential impact/usage.  One might
argue that open access is the least distorting model.  That is, if all
scholarly information is readily available, then impact/usage should be as
closely related to the actual value of the information as it can be in
this imperfect world.

my two bits,

Heather Morrison

On 16-Mar-04, at 6:38 PM, Michelle Kraft wrote:

> I have been reading this discussion with some interest.  I have a 
> question regarding unavailability of certain articles and impact 
> factors.
>
> Take for instance the journal Spine.  We have a subscription to the
> journal, but it contains quite a few articles in the epages that are
> popular.  Unfortunately, we can not afford an institutional site 
> license to Spine, which means we cannot access their epages.  We are 
> usually unsuccessful in getting the article through ILL because many 
> libraries do not ILL journal epages.  Therefore, we have to go back to 
> our patron and tell them we cannot get that article.  The only way the 
> patron can get the article is buy it themselves or find a friend with a 
> subscription to Spine.
>
> So while all have been talking about the relative nature of impact 
> factors on open access articles, I am curious as to know what one would 
> find with the impact factors on restricted articles like those similar 
> to Spine's epages.
> ___________________
> Michelle Kraft
> kraftm@ccf.org