Re: Significance of BMJ figures

["Joseph Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

No, not astounding:  deceptive.  What do people do when they come 
to a site?  When I mistakenly set a Google search for all 
languages instead of just English and get hits across a dozen or 
more languages, what does it mean if I do not understand more 
than a few words of Spanish or French?  Can we assume that 
everyone who accesses Joyce's Ulysses reads and comprehends it? 
Is an article on medical science intelligible to someone who is 
not trained in the field?  These numbers that are being tossed 
around are ridiculous.  Access means nothing.  Understanding is 
everything.  We have no measurement for that.

Joe Esposito


On 8/26/07, David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu> wrote:
> The significance depends on how carefully you look at it:
>
> Some arithmetic:
>
> Corrected for response rate, that's 35,254 unique individuals
> during a single week. Approximately 2/3 of them are visiting for
> the first time, which gives 36,111 new visitors, which amounts to
> 960,000 new visitors a year.  This figures are for what has been
> deliberately selected as the slowest week of the year, July
> 13-20.  Assuming that average activity is twice that, this is 2
> million people a year.
>
> About half the total visitors (including the medically related
> 80%) did not have subscription access---either personal or
> institutional-- to the full site.
>
> If we add "other", which seems reasonable in this context, that
> would be another 50%. (Journalists are a separate category, not
> included)
>
> 2 to 3 million people a year. A twofold increase per year would
> mean 4 - 6 million next year. These numbers are about double what
> I would have guessed.
>
> The amount of the demand looks a little different when you look
> at people instead of percentages.
>
> 2-3 million a year. One single journal. Astounding.
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
> dgoodman@princeton.edu
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Sally Morris <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>
> Date: Thursday, August 23, 2007 3:05 pm
> Subject: RE: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>
>> Apologies for this much delayed response (due to temporary
>> unavailability of the BMJ statistics during their website revamp)
>>
>> Peter Banks (whose sound good sense we all miss sadly) may not
>> have interviewed 'homemakers in Houston', but anyone can have a
>> look at the usage information on the British Medical Journal's
>> website (see
>> http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/about-bmj/visitor-
>> statistics/questionnaire).
>> Year after year, just 2% of usage has been from patients, and 4%
>> from the general public;  this year the figures jumped to 6% and
>> 5% respectively.  However, this still does not exactly look like
>> overwhelming demand to me...
>>
>> Sally
>>
>> Sally Morris
>> Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
>> South House, The Street
>> Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
>> Tel:  +44(0)1903 871286
>> Fax:  +44(0)8701 202806
>> Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Peter
>> Banks
>> Sent: 30 January 2007 01:55
>> To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
>> Subject: Re: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts
>> from article
>> in Nature Magazine
>>
>> Mr. Banks has not interviewed homemakers in Houston. Instead, I
>> spent 20 years in patient education. I've looked at the
>> statistics that show 90 million Americans have limited health
>> literacy; considered the 40 million Hispanic patients for whom
>> English is often a second language; considered the fact that 47
>> million Americans have no health insurance and therefore no
>> opportunity to discuss health information with a physician. I've
>> created low-literacy health publications, Spanish language
>> publications.
>>
>> I have also been a cancer patient and used the Internet. In the
>> search for information, NIH's MedLine Plus, the American Cancer's
>> Society page, and many other patient-oriented pages were
>> extremely useful. PubMed Central was largely useless, since I do
>> not happen to be a cultured cell or a rat.
>>
>> At the same time, we made virtually all the content of the
>> journal Diabetes Care freely available (after a 3-month delay).
>> I/we did this not because it would help very many patients--from
>> usage statistics, it very clearly didn't--but not to inhibit
>> those few who might use the information productively.
>>
>> What we didn't do is to adopt the reprehensible tactic of some OA
>> advocates or Sen. Cornyn and suggest that a treatment for breast
>> cancer or diabetes was locked behind subscriptions barriers. OA
>> may be a good idea on some grounds, but patient education is not
>> one of them.
>>
>> Those who know little about patient education and empowerment
>> shouldn't presume to lecture others.
>>
>> Peter Banks