Re: A word on calculating costs

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

hi Marie - this is very helpful - may I suggest one small change?

If Cornell's research output closely correlates with ISI journals, then if
the whole spreadsheet is adjusted to account for non-ISI journals, it is
the figures of other libraries that would increase proportionately, not
Cornell's (which were already included with the ISI-based data).  Once the
research output of other continents, countries, and non-ARL institutions
is factored in, Cornell's costs end up lower, not higher.

best,

Heather Morrison

On 10-Jan-05, at 4:26 PM, <MARIE.MCVEIGH@thomson.com> wrote:

> I read Phil's report and his spreadsheet with great interest - but most
> of debate following has centered on his cost-assumptions, quickly
> leaving behind the question of the volume of articles produced.  The
> total cost to any given institution would be a function of both these
> things:  total articles x cost per article.  May I weigh-in with some
> examination of the first part of the equation?
>
> If I understand Phil Davis's calculations correctly:  if you use the
> figure 20,000 to estimate the size of the journal universe, then, yes,
> the 8900+ journals indexed by ISI is about 45%.  However, we don't have
> any bias towards indexing the most "prolific" journals.  If you look at
> the journals we do index from any given publisher and the journals we do
> not index from that publisher, there is no difference in the volume of
> materials produced per journal.  Given any two journals in a subject
> and/or from a region, we prefer the one that is more cited per article,
> not the one that produces more articles.
>
> Because ISI's selection is largely independent of the volume of articles
> published, I would guess that ISI's coverage is close to being
> representative of the population as a whole.  This would make 92% an
> overestimate of the proportion of indexed articles compared to all
> articles.  If ISI's coverage is, indeed, repesentative, then the
> percentage of covered articles compared to all articles would be closer
> to 45%.
>
> However, 92% might be pretty close to the proportion of Cornell-authored
> articles that are indexed by ISI.  I think David Goodman made that point
> - that ISI coverage might be quite closely matched to the journals in
> which most authors at ARL Universities will choose to publish.  I think
> Phil's calculation assumed that the ARL scholars' articles would show a
> uniform densite across all available journals (20,000), and the number
> of articles in any given journal would depend only on the size of the
> journal's production.  However, among the 20,000 journals will be a lot
> of local, regional, and specialized journals. Such a journal may publish
> many hundreds of articles a year, but will not have published ANYTHING
> from an a scholar from Cornell.
>
> How, then, can you estimate the volume of articles published by scholars
> at Cornell, based on the number of articles indexed by ISI with
> "Cornell" in the address field?  Is it entirely unjustified to use
> Bradford's Law? Assume that 80% of Cornell's "core" production is
> included in the top 20% of journals.  If this 20% co-incides with ISI's
> coverage (and it would be pretty close in most subjects), then ISI would
> cover at least 80% of the published output from Cornell.  This shifts
> the total cost upward - since it results in a larger estimate of
> Cornell's output.
>
> Marie McVeigh