The debate has already proliferated and a number of issues has been raised. I will limit my comments to four issues directly relating to the study.

The first issue is the difference between OA and OA journals. I agree with you, Stevan ,that OA journals are not the same as OA and the terminology should be used with care as the demarcation of the term “open access” tends to be unclear as it is and the abstract could have been more accurate. Having said that, it is clearly stated in the article that the focus is on OA journals: The research questions are stated as follows:
1. Are authors from developing countries more attracted to publishing in OA journals? Are OA journals thus characterised by a greater share of authors from developing countries than traditional subscription based journals?
2. Do authors from developed and developing countries cite differently in OA journals than authors of same nationalities publishing in NOA journals?

Secondly, I would like to stress that this article do not try to assess the benefits of OA for developing countries. The conclusion of the study is not that open access is of no benefit to developing countries. From the conclusion:

“[B]ased on this study author behaviour in terms of OA publishing and citing cannot be distinguished on the basis of the author(s) being located in developed or developing country. However, OA journals can be characterised by attracting a certain group of authors as the results show that although authors from developing and developed countries do not differ in terms of citing OA journals, publications by both authors from developed and developing countries differ from the two former groups.”

I would not recommend drawing the conclusion that OA is no benefit for developing countries on the basis of the present study. The analyses are based on publication and citation counts, and we should be careful not to confuse citation rates with usage. Whether one prefers one method of analysis over the other is another matter beyond the scope of my paper.

The third issue is that Stevan recommend not comparing OA journals and non-OA journals, “because journals differ in quality and content, and OA journals tend to be newer and fewer than non-OA journals (and often not at the top of the quality hierarchy).” However, the distinction between OA article and non-OA article is not unproblematic either. A few examples: (1) Some studies of OA on article level include earlier versions of the publication when determining the OA status of a publication as they do not distinguish between various versions of publications. However, two publications with same title and author are not necessarily identical as e.g. a working paper can differ quite substantially from the later journal article. (2) An article not available OA can be distributed via various informal forums and consequently providing the members of a research community with de facto open access. Scholarly communication is a a continuum in the paper-only world as well as in the electronic (Kling and McKim, 1999).

Fourth, Patrick Gaule states that this study cannot ”statistically rule out the possibility that authors from developing countries may be more likely to cite open access journals”. Typically, it is preferred to have statistically significant results and that preference can be seen in the share of published studies with statistically significant results which tend to be much higher than in unpublished studies. However, studies reporting non-significant findings are also important to report (e.g. Banks, 2004).

Finally, I would like to say that I look forward to continuing these discussions in the primary literature where we also need to document the differences of opinion.

Tove Faber Frandsen

Banks, M. (2004), Connections between open access publishing and access to gray literature. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 92(2), 164-166.

Kling, R. and McKim, G. (1999). Scholarly communication and the continuum of electronic publishing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50, 890-906.

Leslie,
Please remember that this is a blog post and not an academic article. Blog posts are written much like the news: they contain a single narrative and lack the nuance and complexity found in academic articles.

I encourage you (and others) to read Frandsen’s article. It is there, in the 25 pages of text, where you will find the details and complexity you desire.

1. From our perspective, OA is as much about the flow of knowledge from the South to the North as much as the traditional concern with access to literature from the North. So the question to ask is whether with OA, authors from the North are starting to cite authors from the South. This is a study we are planning. We already have good evidence that more authors from the North are publishing in OA journals in the South (already an interesting reversal) but we need a more careful analysis of the citation data.

2. The more critical issue regarding OA and developing country scientists is that most of them who publish in “international” journals could not access their own publications. This is where open repositories is crucial, to provide access to research from the South that are otherwise inaccessible.

3. The Frandsen study focuses on biology journals and I am not sure what percentage of them are available to DC researchers through HINARI/AGORA. This would explain why researchers in this area would not need to rely on OA materials as much. But HINARI etc. are not OA programs, and local researchers will be left with nothing when the programs are terminated. OA is the only sustainable way to build local research capacity in the long term.

4. Norris et. al’s [2008] “Open access citation rates and developing countries” focuses instead on Mathematics, a field not covered by HINARI and they conclude:

” that the majority of citations were given by Americans to Americans, but the admittedly small number of citations from authors in developing countries do seem to show a higher proportion of citations given to OA articles than is the case for citations from developed countries. Some of the evidence for this conclusion is, however, mixed, with some of the data pointing toward a more complex picture of citation behaviour.”

http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?_id=335_elpub2008

5. Citation behaviour is complex indeed and more studies on OA’s impact in the developing world are clearly needed. Davis’ eagerness to pronounce that there is “No Benefit for Poor Scientists” based on one study is highly premature.

If there should be a study showing that people in developing countries prefer imported bottled water over local drinking water, should efforts to ensure clean water supply locally be questioned?

Leslie Chan

More interesting are her results on the composition of authorship in toll access and open access journals. A closer look at the regression tables suggests that developing country authors may be less likely to publish in open access (negative coefficient and p-value of 0.16). This should remind the open access community that appropriate steps need to be taken to ensure that open access does not make it more difficult for developing country scientists to publish.

Patrick Gaulé