Re: Article on arXiv

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

David,

The last time I heard the argument was just June 18th, in The
Occasional Pamphlet, a blog written by Stuart Shieber at Harvard.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2009/06/18/dont-ask-dont-tell-rights-
retention-for-scholarly-articles/>see blog

"Furthermore, there is ample empirical evidence from fields such
as physics that enjoy essentially 100 percent open access to
preprints that availability of preprints does not lead to
reductions in subscriptions." (see last sentence in the paragraph
entitled "The economic argument")

In his post, Prof Shieber also borrows from another popular myth
suggesting that freely-accessible scientific articles lead to
more citations:

"Study after study has shown that articles available freely
online are more widely cited than those that are available only
through publishers=92 access-limited venues."

Now I realize that we could spend several email rebuttals
debating the exact meaning of these two statements. Does "fields
such as physics" really mean all of physics, or just parts of it?
As written, he seems to make a pretty comprehensive claim. Is
Prof. Shieber really implying a causal relationship between free
access and citations? Without any any conditional or qualifying
statement, it appears so.

--Phil Davis


David Prosser wrote:

> Could somebody please let me know when the last time was they
> heard anybody (informed or otherwise) say:
>
> 'everything published in physics can be found in the arXiv'
>
> Thanks
>
> David
>
> http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/06/17/physics-papers-and-the-arxiv/>arXiv