RE: Who gets hurt by Open Access?

["Lisa Dittrich" <lrdittrich@aamc.org>]

Peter, of course, needs to answer this question himself, but let me jump
in with a couple of comments:

First, you'd need to look at more than one issue.  This is what scientists
call a very small sample.

Second, along similar lines:  in the discussion of what patients want in
terms of information about their particular conditions, all I'm hearing is
anecdotal evidence.  Clearly what is needed is a broad study of "real
people"--not the patient advocacy groups or the people who have the
intelligence and wherewithal to go to their public and university
libraries, but the "average citizen," many of whom, according to polls
our association has done (completely unrelated to Open Access issues), do
not even know what the NIH is.  (alarming but true.)  Regardless of
whether these polling data are accurate or not, again, we need to move
beyond anecdote to harder data, and from Ns of 40 to Ns of a few 100.

Lisa

Lisa Dittrich
Managing Editor
Academic Medicine
2450 N Street NW
Washington,D.C. 20037
lrdittrich@aamc.org (e-mail)
202-828-0590 (phone)
202-828-4798 (fax)
Academic Medicine's Web site: www.academicmedicine.org

>>> David.Goodman@liu.edu 07/27/05 4:53 PM >>>

Dear Peter,

I have, as you suggested, looked at the funding sources for your authors. 
In the most recent issue of "Diabetes," July 2005, there are 40 articles.
   
20 of them have one or more US government sponsors 
21 have one of more non-US governmental sponsors
7 have one or more US non-profit organization sponsors
20 have one or more non-US non-profit sponsors,
2 have one or more US industry sponsors
10 have one or more non-US industry sponsors.

of these 40, 

     2 have only industry sponsors
     9 are either NIH internal authors, or have only NIH as a sponsor,

(Many had multiple sponsorships; I did not count author addresses as
sponsors unless no sponsor was listed.)

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu