Re: Essay on article metrics

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Don't be confused, David.

I read Phil's comment, and the series of comments he has made on
this list and at Scholarly Kitchen, as a sustained critique of
metrics madness.  He continually points out the limitations of
the methodologies being used.  I have not spoken to Phil about
whether or not he believes there are valid metrics beyond a
certain threshold.  I doubt that there are, but Phil may disagree
with me.  (I do believe in the utility of quantification for some
things up to a certain point.)

Professor Harnad, on the other hand, clearly disagrees with me.
That is his prerogative.

I clearly stated that my comment applies equally to toll-access
and open access publications.

There is at least one metric that seems highly credible to me:
what people are willing to pay for with their own money.  This
includes individual subscriptions for journals and service fees
for open access publishers such as Hindawi, BMC, and PLOS.

Joe Esposito

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 3:10 PM, David Prosser
<david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> I'm confused, why was this not tiresome when Joe was promoting
> Phil Davis' comments questioning the methodology (so non-tiresome
> Joe was suggesting there could be a book in it), but suddenly
> tiresome when the authors respond and defend their methodology?
>
> It is entirely reasonable to say that people shouldn't care about
> downloads and citations. It is also entirely reasonable to
> suggest that downloads and citations are not the whole story when
> it comes to "value". But those that are interested in downloads
> and citations have, quite rightly, called for evidence that OA
> increases (on average) downloads and citations. Phil's work
> appears to show that OA increases average downloads, that of
> Gargouri et al appears to show that OA increases average
> citations. Evidence was asked for, evidence was produced. Is
> that really so unreasonable?
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.=
yale.edu]
> On Behalf Of Joseph Esposito
> Sent: 11 January 2010 23:04
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Essay on article metrics
>
> This is tiresome.
>
> There is no OA Advantage not because of the merits or limitations
> of OA but because all these purported advantages and
> disadvantages are based on the pseudo-science of quantifying what
> is not entirely quantifiable. Citation count or page views or
> downloads or whatever are useful *approximations* of some
> qualities of materials, but an approximation is not the same
> thing as the underlying value, which is subject to various
> interpretations. You might as well base a college admissions
> program on the sole criterion that a math score of 710 is
> unquestionably better than one of 700.
>
> These comments apply to subscription-based publishing as well as
> to OA publications.
>
> I know the fashion is to shut down humanities departments or
> simply to starve them (or at least all of the adjuncts who work
> there) to death, but could we not reintroduce some judgment into
> this discussion? And while we are at it, how about a simple
> experiment: those who wish to publish with an OA service do so,
> and those who don't, don't.
>
> Joe Esposito