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Re: Decision making by Libraries on serials and monographs and useage (re puzzled by self-archiving thread)

Sally is being swift, not slow. What she means, I believe, is that OA adds access only marginally. So for an elite publication, 99% of the potential readers get access through subscriptions; OA would add the other 1%. For a good but not elite publication, 75% of potential readers get access through subscriptions; OA adds the other 25%. For a mediocre publication, 50% get access through subscriptions, etc., etc.

As the quality of the publication goes down, the amount of access through OA increases; and this rather startling conclusion is based on the crackpot notion that librarians are very, very good at what they do and acquire the publications of greatest merit for their constituency. (Taking this to its logical extension, a truly useless journal would be 100% OA.) One could argue forever about the percentages (and no doubt we will), but the fundamental point remains: OA is marginally beneficial for access, with inferior publications gaining the most.

Joe Esposito

On 1/31/07, Sally Morris (Morris Associates)
<sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Perhaps I'm being slow - but I still don't get why it makes sense
to assume that two variables, access and 'efficiency' (a term I
find even more puzzling if you're saying that it has two,
apparently unrelated, meanings in your study, and that access
increases efficiency) should be yoked together - isn't it more
meaningful to examine changes to a single (hypothetical) variable
at a time?

On the 'long tail', I wouldn't argue that many - if any -
researchers have access to everything they want. However, the
studies I've seen suggest that in the richer parts of the world,
there is a relatively high level of satisfaction. I seem to
recall that in OhioLink, the previously unavailable materials
were indeed used quite heavily - but this use was spread very
thinly over a very large number of resources (or, to put it
another way, collection decisions had in fact been largely
correct). What I meant about 'long tail', however, was the long
tail of users - I still think it is entirely logical to assume
that there is a declining return on accessibility to any given
resource as the 'circle' of users gets wider. Perhaps I haven't
explained this very well - can anyone else help?

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Email: sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of John Houghton
Sent: 24 January 2007 13:01
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Decision making by Libraries on serials and monographs and
useage (re puzzled by self-archiving thread)

Dear Sally, et al.

1) As outlined in our report (pp42-46) we introduce access and efficiency as negative variables, to reflect the fact that in the real world there is less than 100% access and efficiency. The basic result is that, if accessibility and efficiency are constant over the estimation period but then show a one-off increase (e.g. because of a move to open access) then, to a close approximation, the returns to R&D will increase by the same percentage increase as that in the accessibility and efficiency parameters.

There are two reasons for our using the average rate of return to R&D, rather than the marginal rate (as I think you suggest). First, conceptually, the return relates to the expenditure, and we have not altered the level of expenditure in the model (its a given). So, one could argue that we should use the average rather than marginal rate of return. Second, more practically, no one really knows the marginal rate of return to R&D.

You assume that most potential users already have access. I am less confident that they do. For example:

* Some smaller universities in Australia have quite limited access.
If you look at recent CAUL statistics and take Victorian
universities as an example, you can see that Monash (one of our
larger research universities) reports 75,725 current serial titles
in 2004, whereas the University of Ballarat reports 20,762.
Obviously not all serials are journals, and not all the things
needed at a large university will be needed at a smaller one, but
such numbers are indicative of quite different levels of access -
even amongst researchers.

* Having an interest in the issue I often ask people in industry if
and how they access journals and whether they think they would
benefit from more access. It is anecdotal, but most executives of
small firms in electronics, biotechnology, consulting engineering,
management and economic consulting, etc. that I have spoken to say
they have very limited access (mainly to print copies of titles
from the one or two societies they belong to, or through
association with one of the universities), and most say they need
more and easier access.

* Evidence of hits and downloads from institutional repositories and
things like the Medline Index suggests that use is much wider than
the limited audience reached by the subscription literature, both
geographically and sectorally.

* There is evidence that developing world participation in research
is limited by their lack of timely and ready access.
* etc.

Many of these issues are discussed, and references given in our
report.

2) Efficiency is being used in two senses... the usefulness/use
of the knowledge created by R&D and the efficiency of the conduct
of R&D. In the report (pp31-34 and Appendix II) we outline some
of the potential impacts of enhanced access, including a range of
ways in which the efficiency of research might be increased (e.g.
increased speed of discovery, reduction of duplicative research,
etc.) and its use might be extended (e.g. enhanced access to
industry, government and society, the emergence of new industries
such as weather derivatives, etc.). These are discussed in the
context of developing an "impacts framework" that focuses on the
issues of access, use and efficiency.

Lastly, the 5% figure is in the mid-range of the 1% to 10%
variation in the access and efficiency variables that we
'experimented' with in our estimations. It is hypothetical in the
sense that there is no metric that led us to 5% directly.
However, if one takes citation differences between subscription
and OA as a possible metric, it is worth noting reported examples
of OA papers getting 2-5 times the citations (e.g. Open Citation
Project references). Stevan's OA Advantage work suggests that
some of it will be ongoing and some not.... but twice as many
citations perhaps suggests something like a 100% increase in
access and use, and 5 times as many a 400% increase. So, our
hypothetical 5% is probably pretty conservative when set against
such metrics. On the other hand, of course, R&D produces
knowledge "outputs" other than publications. Tenopir and King
suggested that something up to 20% of researchers' time is spent
reading and writing, so if everything that researchers do
contributes to the R&D "stock of knowledge" then, simplistically,
publications account for 20% of the stock of knowledge. On that
basis, a 25% increase in access to publications alone would
produce a 5% increase in access to the stock of knowledge (other
things remaining the same). On that "logic", our 5% is perhaps
at the conservative end of the kind of access impact implied by
the sustainable and continuing OA Advantage. Remember, our
analysis relates to any/all types of R&D outputs, not just
publications and not just journal articles.

Again, let me stress that this is preliminary work, the intention
of which is to begin to explore possible ways to make ballpark
estimates of the potential economic impacts of enhanced access.
It is one possible staring point...

Refs:
DEST report - http://dspace.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/44485
CAUL Statistics - http://www.caul.edu.au/stats/

Regards
John Houghton

Centre for Strategic Economic Studies (CSES), Victoria University
E-mail: john.houghton@pobox.com
Web: www.pobox.com/~houghton