The bibliometrics of OA

[David Wojick]

On the policy side my concern is government control of scientific 
publishing. If a publisher allows archiving that is their business, but if 
a government requires it that is a big step toward government control.

On the data side my interest is discovery, or findability as I call it. On 
the green data side my basic question is how many full text journal 
articles are in a given repository? I do not find this data anywhere. ROAR 
tells me how many records a repository has but these are not articles. For 
example, ROAR says Cambridge D-space has over 200,000 records but in fact 
it has almost no articles at all, just a huge directory of molecular names 
or something. Other repositories have only metadata, including many links 
to subscription pay per article pages.

On the gold data side I simply want to know how many articles a given 
publisher has published. For example, which is bigger, PLoS with PLoS One 
or Hindawi with over 400 gold journals?

Then too there are departmental repositories, subject matter repositories, 
departmental publication Web sites, group Websites and individual author 
Websites. There seems to be no way to tell where these articles are, so it 
is impossible to tell what is really going on. But of course this is 
characteristic of revolutions.

Perhaps some of this data is in WoS, but ironically WoS is behind a big pay 
wall.

David

At 08:04 AM 8/27/2012, you wrote:
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): 
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>On 2012-08-27, David Wojick wrote on Sigmetrics:
>
>>I quite agree that there are important metric issues
>>with OA, beginning with how many articles are being
>>published, or archieved, and where? Is this simple
>>information available anywhere? I cannot find it.
>>
>>My original objection was to Arun's advocacy of OA,
>>which I do not share in the case of mandatory OA.
>>Do we want to debate policy here, as opposed to metrics?
>
>Why do we have to keep hearing David Wojick's opinions
>if he does not believe they should be debated on the
>sigmetrics list? (I am accordingly branching it to GOAL,
>where they certainly can be debated.)
>
>Now some clarifications:
>
>Isidro F. Aguillo wrote:
>
>>In my humble opinion this is a true Sigmetrics issue
>>as bibliometrics (publishing in journals with a high
>>impact factor) is one of the main reasons (perhaps
>>the only reason) why the authors are signing contracts
>>transferring their rights to the publishers, as usually
>>they perceive that OA alternative journals have not
>>the same value for evaluation purposes (my personal
>>experience with authors from different countries). In
>>my personal view OA status should be considered
>>as an important indicator when building journal rankings.
>
>This is a little scrambled. Isidoro.
>
>OA means free online access.
>
>There are two ways to provide OA: Publish in an OA
>journal (Gold OA) or publish in any journal and
>self-archive your final draft (Green OA).
>
>Green OA obviously has the same value for evaluation
>purposes as non-OA, since it is the same articles.
>
>Inasmuch as journal rankings are based on quality or
>citation counts: quality is unaffected by Green OA; and
>citation (and download) counts are increased by Green
>OA (just as they are decreased by high journal prices).
>
>As to Gold OA: Surely, Isidoro, you do not mean (as I'm
>sure you don't) that in ranking journals (or research or
>researchers) for either quality or citation counts, the
>journal's business-model should be given some weight,
>rather than just its quality or citation count?
>
>Now as to David Wojick, who wrote:
>
>>>Stevan, you seem to have missed the word mandatory
>>>in my 7 word sentence.
>
>David's 7 word sentence was:
>
>>>I regard mandatory green OA as theft.
>
>to which my  reply had been:
>
>"And a lot of authors and librarians consider journal
>subscription prices to be extortion."
>
>Regarding mandates, I suppose David has in mind
>something along the lines of the following mind-numbing
>distinction from Elsevier's latest policy revision (I paraphrase
>to keep the double-talk to a minimum):
>
>"Authors retain the right to provide Green OA if they may,
>but they not if they must."
>
>In other words, it's not theft for authors to exercise their
>right because they feel like it, but it's "theft" if they exercise
>their right if their employers and/or funders require them
>to exercise it.
>
>It would be an awkward day indeed, for publishers, if, in
>ascertaining that the text that authors submit for publication
>is  indeed their own to submit, and not stolen, the publisher's
>policy were:
>
>  "We will publish your work if you submitted it because
>you felt like it, but it's theft if you submit it because your
>employers and/or funders require it."
>
>In other words, the "publisher or perish" mandate is the
>publisher's best friend. Best not to bite the hand that feeds
>  you, when the mandate is extended to "self-archive to flourish."
>
>As to David's query about how many articles are being
>published, or archived, and where: There has been a good
>deal posted and published about this. Start with this figure
>about the UK data from a recent Nature editorial:
><http://www.nature.com/news/uk-jpg-7.4973?article=1.10846>http://www.nature.com/news/uk-jpg-7.4973?article=1.10846
>
>And then read some of the references cited here:
><http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/905-Finch-Fiasco-in-Figures.html>http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/905-Finch-Fiasco-in-Figures.html
>
>Stevan Harnad
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20120827/722f8963/attachment.html>