Comments on: Open Access and Global Participation in Science

By: Online Access and Citations — A Spurious Relationship, Economists Say « The Scholarly Kitchen

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:32:02 +0000

[...] namely that online access concentrates citations on a smaller number of recent articles, and that it disproportionately benefits scholars in developing countries, [...]

By: Openness and Secrecy in Science — A Careful Balance « The Scholarly Kitchen

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:25:10 +0000

[...] of Chicago, and author of several other notable studies on the effect of online journals and open access on citation behavior. He is someone equally at ease with the techniques of critical theory as he [...]

By: Mark's cheap wine club

Mark's cheap wine club — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:50:16 +0000

Nicely put Gabriel, the same thing struck me when I saw this. Although this probably shouldn’t be surprising given the multitude of opportunities available for education in the western world, being able to take access more directly into account seems virtually impossible to me given the huge amount of variables involved.

By: gabriel

gabriel — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:15:09 +0000

One also cannot miss the irony that the article itself isn’t open access…so regardless of the time window, the ability to evaluate the work is available only to those that subscribe.

By: Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:49:20 +0000

Evans & Reimer (2009) (E & R) show that a large portion of the increased citations generated by making articles freely accessible online (“Open Access,” OA) come from Developing-World authors citing OA articles more. It is very likely that a within-US comparison based on the same data would show much the same effect: making articles OA should increase citations from authors at the Have-Not universities (with the smaller journal subscription budgets) more than from Harvard authors. Articles by Developing World (and US Have-Not) authors should also be cited more if they are made OA, but the main beneficiaries of OA will be the best articles, wherever they are published. This raises the question of how many citations – and how much corresponding research uptake, usage, progress and impact – are lost when articles are embargoed for 6-12 months by their publishers against being made OA by their authors. (It is important to note that E & R’s results are not based on immediate OA but on free access after an embargo of up to a year or more.)

By: Philip Davis

Philip Davis — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:22:30 +0000

Thanks Todd. Based of my reading of the methodology, it doesn't appear that programs that promote the free access of scientific literature to developing countries (such as HighWire's program , AGORA or HINARI) are factored into the model. Evans reports that the open access effect is much lower for these countries and chalks it up to limited Internet access, although it might equally be the effect of these programs.

By: Todd McGee

Todd McGee — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:49:49 +0000

Phil,
Thank you for the summary. It seems like the results are further complicated by the number of non-profit scientific societies who grant free access to all articles to users coming from countries defined as “developing economies”. There are a number of these programs and they grant even wider access than the traditional delayed-access model for those users outside of traditional economic powers. Was that complication adequately accounted for in the study?