On Evans and Reimer's (2009) Science

[Williams Nwagwu]

The fact of institutions inability to subscribe for all the materials they need in their libraries is a very old problem, although it is a common knowledge that this problem is more acute in the developing countries. This does not however mean that scholars and institutions in the developing regions have zero access to fee-based sources. A few universities are able to buy access to some few sources, some institutions gain access through subscriptions paid for by agencies while individual scholars gain access through personal relationships and interactions. The open access regime only boosted access to scientific publications for scholars and institutions in both the developing and developed worlds. If “Researchers in the developing world, where research funding and libraries are not as robust as they are in wealthier countries, were far more likely to read and cite open source articles”, then the findings of Evans and Reimer should just be set aside.
 Science in the developing regions might not be as robust as it is in the developed world, but science obtained in the region before the regime of Open Access. Open Access has increased access to scholarly publications by those in both worlds, particularly to those who do not have the means of using fee based sources. Journals observing the OA principle cannot be less cited than those being paid for. E and R’s research can only be convincing if they show us that those scholars who use OA publications do not either publish, or only in fee-based sources. They also need to show us the production capacity and proportion of publications attributable to the enemies of OA in relation to those who subscribe to the OA agenda as well as relative number of adherents to OA in comparison with fee based.

Comparing journals from 1945 for a study that focused on Open Access will lead to a terribly skewed sample. When did the OA movement gain ground? The sample of OA papers will definitely be incomparable with that of fee-based. (I have not read the paper).

It remains debatable that a scholar would prefer using a fee based access material which involves parting with some funds and negotiating some logistic bottlenecks to free access one, available at convenience and accessible by a click. Even common sense does not support this kind of opinion.

How does one say that OA "widens the global circle of those who can participate in science and benefit from it." How does “rigorous” information searching which mainly characterizes the fee-based strategy foster information access and use? The corollary is also worth positing: how does easy and cost free access to information constitute an obstacle to knowledge access and use? The only basis upon which E and R’s paper should continue circulating is that they a have a publishing company whose interest they want to protect.