From OAI5 - metrics and usage statistics

[Stevan Harnad]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:37:58 +0200
From: "Armbruster, Chris" <Chris.Armbruster at EUI.EU>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM at LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: From OAI5 - is it the metrics and usage statistics?

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=5710 
At OAI5 a series of very interesting presentations on metrics, together,
provide an outlook on the kinds of services that could be developed on
the basis of open access to research articles and data. The focus was
on usage statistics and impact metrics.

Slides from presentations by Frank Scholze, Johan Bollen and Les Carr
are available online. I recommend a download:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceTimeTable.py?confId=5710&showDate=18-April-2007&showSession=14&detailLevel=contribution&viewMode=plain 

Statistics have been underutilised to further open access. A parallel
issue is how citation metrics have been locked up through ISI and
privilege closed access journals. However, potentially, OA metrics could
be much more varied (and better).

Presentations highlighted the need:
- To identify which kinds of stats would be valuable to different
groups, such as authors, readers, faculty promotion committees, research
evaluation committees, libraries or repository management
- For international standardization
- To ensure that aggregation, data mining and metrics are collected and
analysed in a framework that renders them suitable to providing services.

For a moment I would like to focus on services for authors, particularly
for junior scholars. This would promote the uptake of OA to pre-prints
and post-prints among the younger generation of scholars.
Junior authors are very much dependent on ‘recognition’ of their peers
and elders to further their research programmes and careers. Consider the
simple metrics that the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com) or
Research Papers in Economics (www.repec.org) provide through statistics
on abstract views, full-text downloads, subject specific rankings and
an overall world ranking (of all authors and papers).
A publication in the American Economic Review is, and will be for the
foreseeable future, the ultimate accolade for an economist. But short
of that, one or more of your (working) papers in a Top 10 list of a
subject area is a strong argument in favour of your work.  An overall
rising ranking (as author, of papers) will support your career. But the
‘ranking’ has to be recognised and reinforced: SSRN and RePEc are large
epistemic networks, in which the papers of junior scholars compete for
attention with those of the most senior and prominent scholars. It is
also vital that there is only one (authoritative) version of the paper
that ‘collects’ all the metrics.

Service provision is about benefits. The future of usage statistics
and impact metrics outlined by the OAI5 speakers indicates that the
time has come for OA services that will be so attractive that readers,
authors and users will find them irresistible.

Chris Armbruster

Winner - writing competition 'Access to Knowledge'
Yale Law Information Society Project and the International Journal of
Communications Law and Policy http://research.yale.edu/isp/eventsa2k2.html

"Cyberscience and the Knowledge-based Economy, Open Access and Trade
Publishing: From Contradiction to Compatibility with Nonexclusive
Copyright Licensing" http://ssrn.com/abstract=938119