Significance of BMJ figures

[David Goodman <dgoodman@princeton.edu>]

The significance depends on how carefully you look at it:

Some arithmetic:

Corrected for response rate, that's 35,254 unique individuals 
during a single week. Approximately 2/3 of them are visiting for 
the first time, which gives 36,111 new visitors, which amounts to 
960,000 new visitors a year.  This figures are for what has been 
deliberately selected as the slowest week of the year, July 
13-20.  Assuming that average activity is twice that, this is 2 
million people a year.

About half the total visitors (including the medically related 
80%) did not have subscription access---either personal or 
institutional-- to the full site.

If we add "other", which seems reasonable in this context, that 
would be another 50%. (Journalists are a separate category, not 
included)

2 to 3 million people a year. A twofold increase per year would 
mean 4 - 6 million next year. These numbers are about double what 
I would have guessed.

The amount of the demand looks a little different when you look 
at people instead of percentages.

2-3 million a year. One single journal. Astounding.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Sally Morris <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thursday, August 23, 2007 3:05 pm
Subject: RE: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

> Apologies for this much delayed response (due to temporary
> unavailability of the BMJ statistics during their website revamp)
>
> Peter Banks (whose sound good sense we all miss sadly) may not
> have interviewed 'homemakers in Houston', but anyone can have a
> look at the usage information on the British Medical Journal's
> website (see
> http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/about-bmj/visitor-
> statistics/questionnaire).
> Year after year, just 2% of usage has been from patients, and 4%
> from the general public;  this year the figures jumped to 6% and
> 5% respectively.  However, this still does not exactly look like
> overwhelming demand to me...
>
> Sally
>
> Sally Morris
> Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
> South House, The Street
> Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
> Tel:  +44(0)1903 871286
> Fax:  +44(0)8701 202806
> Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Peter
> Banks
> Sent: 30 January 2007 01:55
> To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
> Subject: Re: e: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts
> from article
> in Nature Magazine
>
> Mr. Banks has not interviewed homemakers in Houston. Instead, I
> spent 20 years in patient education. I've looked at the
> statistics that show 90 million Americans have limited health
> literacy; considered the 40 million Hispanic patients for whom
> English is often a second language; considered the fact that 47
> million Americans have no health insurance and therefore no
> opportunity to discuss health information with a physician. I've
> created low-literacy health publications, Spanish language
> publications.
>
> I have also been a cancer patient and used the Internet. In the
> search for information, NIH's MedLine Plus, the American Cancer's
> Society page, and many other patient-oriented pages were
> extremely useful. PubMed Central was largely useless, since I do
> not happen to be a cultured cell or a rat.
>
> At the same time, we made virtually all the content of the
> journal Diabetes Care freely available (after a 3-month delay).
> I/we did this not because it would help very many patients--from
> usage statistics, it very clearly didn't--but not to inhibit
> those few who might use the information productively.
>
> What we didn't do is to adopt the reprehensible tactic of some OA
> advocates or Sen. Cornyn and suggest that a treatment for breast
> cancer or diabetes was locked behind subscriptions barriers. OA
> may be a good idea on some grounds, but patient education is not
> one of them.
>
> Those who know little about patient education and empowerment
> shouldn't presume to lecture others.
>
> Peter Banks