Perils of Press-Release Journalism: NSF and Chronicle of Higher Education

Thu Feb 26 09:49:29 EST 2009

Certainly there has been research on how press releases figure into the diffusion of scientific information.  For example, there have been bibliometric studies that included press release coverage in a regression equations regarding citedness.  There have also been STS and public understanding of science (I refuse to use the unpleasant abbreviation) papers about this in general as well as the particular case surrounding cold fusion.  There are also studies in scholarly communication that discuss the Ingelfinger rule and the like.

Actually, an editorial in today’s Nature is about this issue with blogs, pre-prints, and press embargos:  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7233/full/4571058a.html

Based on conversations with PLOS and Nature editors, it seems likely that they will both add more information to article pages regarding web commentary on blogs and other social computing technologies.  Their goal is to provide a more 360 view of article/author impact than journal article citations do alone.

As far as how to study, I think there have even been some relevant questions on the GSS as well as smaller surveys, qualitative/ethnographic studies, critical/historical studies, etc.  I’m not saying it’s a done deal, but it certainly has been addressed.

Christina K. Pikas, MLS
R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Voice  240.228.4812 (Washington), 443.778.4812 (Baltimore)
Fax 443.778.5353
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics [mailto:SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu] On Behalf Of David Wojick
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 6:53 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Perils of Press-Release Journalism: NSF and Chronicle of Higher Education

Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html

Steve raises an important scientometric issue, quite apart from the issue of what Evans did or found. This is the role of press releases, and the news articles they engender, in the diffusion of scientific infromation. The question is how to observe and measure such diffusion? The number of information transactions, or A reading about B's results, via news is several orders of magnitude greater than via journal articles. I don't think we even know how many orders of magnitude. Yet this is in some respects the most important mode of scientific knowledge diffusion.

How this news based diffusion affects the dynamics of science is likewise unknown. Is anyone studying this formally? I am doing so informally. The web is providing some new approaches, such a blog tracking and the occurrence of embedded URLs. The spread of characteristic language is also a likely avenue. This is much more like true diffusion analysis than is citation and co-author network analysis, in that it goes beyond tracking large, discrete transactions to looking at a vague spreading cloud of information.

Steve also raises the issue of the spread of misinformation via diffusion of news. This has been studied in the context of general social thought, especially rumors. It is certainly significant in the realm of science and public policy, where the Evans case lies. I study this phenomenon in the climate change debate and in energy policy. Whether it is important in science per se I do not know. It is not even clear how one would approach it, but it seems like an important research topic. Perhaps it should be approached as the diffusion and dynamics of controversy or disagreement.

Cheers,

David

David Wojick, Ph.D.

http://www.osti.gov

Feb 25, 2009 06:40:34 PM, SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu wrote:
Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html In response to my critique<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/535-guid.html> of his Chronicle of Higher Education posting<http://chronicle.com/news/article/6026/fee-based-journals-get-better-results-study-in-fee-based-journal-reports?commented=1#c033840> on Evans and Reimer's (2009) Science article<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/323/5917/1025> (which I likewise critiqued<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/533-guid.html>, though much more mildly), I got an email from Paul Basken asking me to explain what, if anything he had got wrong, since his posting was based entirely on a press release from NSF<http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114225>. Sure enough, the silly spin originated from the NSF Press release (though the buck stops with E & R's vague and somewhat tendentious description and interpretation of some of their findings). Here is the NSF Press Release, enhanced with my comments, for your delectation and verdict:
________________________________
If you offer something of value to people for free while someone else charges a hefty sum of money for the same type of product, one would logically assume that most people would choose the free option. According to new research in today's edition of the journal Science, if the product in question is access to scholarly papers and research, that logic might just be wrong. These findings provide new insight into the nature of scholarly discourse and the future of the open source publication movement[sic, emphasis added].
(1) If you offer something valuable for free, people will choose the free option unless they've already paid for the paid option (especially if they needed -- and could afford -- it earlier).

(2) Free access after an embargo of a year is not the same "something" as immediate free access. Its "value" for a potential user is lower. (That's one of the reasons institutions keep paying for subscription/license access to journals.)

(3) Hence it is not in the least surprising that immediate print-on-paper access + (paid) online access (IP + IO) generates more citations than immediate (paid) print-on-paper access (IP) alone.

(4) Nor is it surprising that immediate (paid) print-on-paper access + online access + delayed free online access (IP +IO + DF) generates more citations than just immediate (paid) print-on-paper + online access (IO + IP) alone -- even if the free access is provided a year later than the paid access.

(5) Why on earth would anyone conclude that the fact that the increase in citations from IP to IP + IO is 12% and the increase in citations from IP + IO to IP + IO + DF is a further 8% implies anything whatsoever about people's preference for paid access over free access? Especially when the free access is not even immediate (IF) but delayed (DF)?
Most research is published in scientific journals and reviews, and subscriptions to these outlets have traditionally cost money--in some cases a great deal of money. Publishers must cover the costs of producing peer-reviewed publications and in most cases also try to turn a profit. To access these publications, other scholars and researchers must either be able to afford subscriptions or work at institutions that can provide access.

In recent years, as the Internet has helped lower the cost of publishing, more and more scientists have begun publishing their research in open source outlets online. Since these publications are free to anyone with an Internet connection, the belief has been that more interested readers will find them and potentially cite them. Earlier studies had postulated that being in an open source format could more than double the number of times a journal article is used by other researchers.
What on earth is an "open source outlet"? ("Open source" is a software matter.) Let's assume what's meant is "open access"; but then is this referring to (i) publishing in an open access journal, to (ii) publishing in a subscription journal but also self-archiving the published article to make it open access, or to (iii) self-archiving an unpublished paper?

What (many) previous studies<http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html> had measured (not "postulated") was that (ii) publishing in a subscription journal (IP + IO) and also self-archiving the published article to make it Open Access (IP + IO + OA) could more than double the citations, compared to IP + IO alone.
To test this theory, James A. Evans, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, and Jacob Reimer, a student of neurobiology also at the University of Chicago, analyzed millions of articles available online, including those from open source publications and those that required payment to access.
No, they did nothing of the sort; and no "theory" was tested.

Evans & Reimer (E & R) only analyzed articles from subscription access journals before and after they became accessible online (to paid subscribers only) (i.e., IP vs IP + IO) as well as before and after the online version was made accessible free for all (after a paid-access-only embargo of up to a year or more: i.e., IP +IO vs IP + IO + DF). Their methodology was based on comparing citation counts for articles within the same journals before and after being made free online at various intervals.
The results were surprising. On average, when a given publication was made available online after being in print for a year, being published in an open source format increased the use of that article by about 8 percent. When articles are made available online in a commercial format a year after publication, however, usage increases by about 12 percent.
In other words, the citation count increase from just (paid) IP to (paid) IP + IO was 12% and the citation count increase from just (paid) IP + IO to (paid) IP + IO + DF was 8%. Not in the least surprising: Making paid-access articles accessible online increases their citations, and making them free online (even if only after a delay of a year) increases them still more.

What is surprising is the rather absurd spin that this press release appears to be trying to put on this unsurprising finding.
"Across the scientific community," Evans said in an interview, "it turns out that open access does have a positive impact on the attention that's given to the journal articles, but it's a small impact."
We already knew that OA increased citations, as the many prior published studies<http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html> have shown.  Most of those studies, however, were based on immediate OA (i.e., IF), not embargoed OA. What E & R do show, interestingly, is that even delaying OA for a year still increases citations, though not nearly as much as immediate OA (IF).
Yet Evans and Reimer's research also points to one very positive impact of the open source movement that is sometimes overlooked in the debate about scholarly publications. 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.
A large portion of the citation increase from (delayed) OA turns out to come from Developing Countries (refuting Frandsen<http://www.hprints.org/hprints-00328270/en/>'s recent report to the contrary). (A similar comparison, within the US, of citations from the Have-Not Universities (with the smaller journal subscription budgets) compared to the Harvards may well reveal the same effect closer to home, though probably at a smaller scale.)
The University of Chicago team concludes that outside the developed world, the open source movement "widens the global circle of those who can participate in science and benefit from it."
And it will be interesting to test for the same effect comparing the Harvards and the Have-Nots in the US -- but a more realistic estimate might come from looking at immediate OA (IF) rather than just embargoed OA (DF).
So while some scientists and scholars may chose to pay for scientific publications even when free publications are available, their colleagues in other parts of the world may find that going with open source works is the only choice they have.
It would be interesting to hear the authors of this NSF press release -- or E & R, for that matter -- explain how this paradoxical "preference" for paid access over free access was tested during the access embargo period...

Stevan Harnad<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>
American Scientist Open Access Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html>
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