RE: Open Access Citation Impact Advantage: weight of the evidence

["Ken Masters" <kmasters@ithealthed.com>]

Hi All

Sandy, perhaps your comment about Heather's "claim" is more 
flippant in its reading that you intended.

The article that she refers to is a literature review showing the 
current (2010) status of research in the area.  It is perfectly 
acceptable to refer to a literature review to back up an argument 
- that is standard procedure in ANY academic discourse.  The 
whole POINT of a literature review is to gather all relevant 
information on the topic so that we do not have situation where 
people refer to a single study to make a generalisation.  If 
you're going to knock the concept of a literature review as 
having any value or validity, then you're about to go up against 
a few hundred thousand researchers.

While we can argue about "truth" ("What is truth?"), when we have 
a situation that a literature review shows more studies 
indicating X than Y, then X has the strongest standing. 
Otherwise, there would be little point to the review.  So, yes, 
Heather's argument appears as solid as any.

If you want, you can question the process of the review.  This 
review, however, explains exactly the search process, so has 
complete transparency.  The only way to criticise it would be if 
you questioned the search process (terms, data bases, etc) or 
interpretations of the results.  For the first, you would need to 
demonstrate a legitimate alternative that would provide 
materially different results; for the 2nd, you would need to 
analyse the studies yourself, and again indicate that your 
analysis showed materially different results.  (Personally, I 
would have preferred it if the results were laid out as a 
meta-analysis, but that is personal preference only, and I can't 
see any reason to believe that it would materially affect the 
interpretation.)

Until that point has been reached, however, I see no valid reason 
to question the review, or Heather's argument.

Worse, you only counter has been shown in the review by using an 
opinion based on a personal perception.  While you're entitled to 
your opinion, it can surely only hold water if you back it up 
with research - and I'd suggest a literature review (and/or a 
large-scale study of your own) would probably be the most 
powerful road to follow.  Until then, I'm afraid, it's only 
speculation vs. research.

Regards

Dr. Ken Masters
Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
Medical Education Unit
College of Medicine & Health Sciences
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultanate of Oman
E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education

____/\/********\/\____

> Subject: Re: Open Access Citation Impact Advantage: weight of the
> evidence
> From: Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>
> Date: Wed, February 23, 2011 2:32 am
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>
> I hope Heather is not seriously making the claim that truth is 
> established by the greater number of articles that purport to 
> prove a citation advantage.
>
> What makes sense to me is that the highest-publishing authors 
> are located in those institutions that still can afford to 
> subscribe to a wide range of periodicals, and citations by them 
> would therefore be unaffected by OA.
>
> The greater the cancellation of journals, however, the more 
> even those scientists would be affected and the more OA could 
> be expected to make a difference.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> At 8:08 PM -0500 2/20/11, Heather Morrison wrote:
>
>>Phil Davis' recent comment to my post, "The Open Access 
>>Citation Impact Advantage: weight of the evidence" misses the 
>>central point: the weight of the evidence support an open 
>>access citation impact advantage.
>>
>>As A. Ben Wagner points out, there are: 39 articles showing an 
>>open access citation impact advantage, in comparison with 7 
>>articles either showing no effect or ascribing the citation 
>>impact effect to factors unrelated to OA publication. 
>>ohttp://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html
>>
>>The list of studies showing an OA citation impact advantage 
>>include two of Phil Davis' own, Davis, P.M., (2009) (showing a 
>>17% citation impact advantage) and Davis & Fromerth (2007), 
>>showing a citation impact advantage.
>>
>>A Davis study claiming no citation impact advantage (2008) has 
>>been widely critiqued as a premature conclusion. This study 
>>found a strong download advantage. Other citation impact 
>>advantage studies have found that an early citation impact 
>>advantage tends to correlate with a later citation impact 
>>advantage. This just makes sense; an author must download and 
>>read a work before they can cite it, and one must allow time 
>>for publication of citing articles.
>>
>>best,
>>
>>Heather Morrison, MLIS
>>Doctoral Candidate, SFU School of Communication
>>http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
>>The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
>>http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com