Scientometric aspects of government OA mandates

[David Wojick]

The scientometric policy issue is agencies claiming impacts they did not generate, or how to determine the impacts their various programs are actually generating. This is part of what is called in the US the science of science policy, in which I am active. The central question is what are taxpayers getting for their money?

Some of us are interesting in designing a federal system that works, which may not be one of your concerns. You seem to think that anyone who does not subscribe to your crusade is an industry lobbyist. My concern is that the government not do harm and I admire the scholarly publishing industry, so I am not on your side.

David

On Dec 9, 2013, at 3:56 PM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 1:19 PM, David Wojick <dwojick at craigellachie.us> wrote:
>  
> The Scholarly Kitchen has an interesting article on how to define "federal funding" under the emerging US OA mandate. See http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/12/09/what-does-federally-funded-actually-mean/ 
> 
> The scientometric issue is how valid the impact analysis of government agencies can be when "government funding" is poorly defined, such that research with very little actual government funding is included? Conversely, what role might the scientometric community play in resolving this issue? I have raised this issue in the Kitchen article comments, if anyone wants to join the discussion.
> 
> Let me see if I get this: 
> 
> Because it is not clear what proportion of the research that a funded researcher publishes can be directly attributed to any particular funding source, it would be better if funders did not mandate that it must be made Open Access (for "scientometric" reasons!)?
> 
> I don't think so.
> 
> In any case, don’t worry: Whatever is not covered by federal funder mandates will be covered by institutional mandates like Harvard’s, MIT’s etc. All refereed research output, both funded and unfunded, in all fields, is the obvious, natural target for OA. No problem for researchers to figure that out: they won’t have to think twice. 
> 
> And publishers — for all their moaning and groaning, and dire warnings of doom and gloom — will, of course, figure out a way to adapt. All the FUD they keep trying to raise at each juncture is so unmistakably just smoke and delay tactics: futile efforts to stave off the obvious, optimal and inevitable outcome for research, researchers, the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying public in the online era: 100% Open Access to all peer-reviewed research immediately upon acceptance for publication.
> But why is a policy consultant for OSTI raising this "scientometric" smokescreen which sounds, for all the world, as if it were coming from a lobbyist for the publishing industry?
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20131209/25e7413b/attachment.html>