Re: Open Access: No Benefit for Poor Scientists

[lesliechan@rogers.com]

The paper cited by Phil Davis is "A bibliometric author analysis 
in the field of biology" based on a data set of 150 journals and 
the study period was 2006 only. The author, Tove Faber Frandsen, 
caution that: "to make definitive conclusions about the 
potentials of open access for developing countries, there is a 
need for more studies in this research area, especially those 
analysing developing countries at a larger scale and investigate 
the actual publishing and citing behaviour of authors from those 
countries."

In respond to Davis' posting, Patrick Gaule, whom Davis cited, 
writes: "Ms. Frandsen's conclusion that 'authors from developing 
countries do not cite open access more than authors from 
developed countries' is not based on solid evidence.

While she reports the p-value and not the standard errors, it is 
clear from her regression results that she cannot statistically 
rule out the possibility that authors from developing countries 
may be more likely to cite open access journals.

Here are some additional comments I posted on the AmSci forum:

1. From our perspective, OA is as much about the flow of
    knowledge from the South to the North as much as the
    traditional concern with access to literature from the North.
    So the question to ask is whether with OA, authors from the
    North are starting to cite authors from the South. This is a
    study we are planning.

We already have good evidence that more authors from the North 
are publishing in OA journals in the South (already an 
interesting reversal) but we need a more careful analysis of the 
citation data.

2. The more critical issue regarding OA and developing country
    scientists is that most of them who publish in "international"
    journals could not access their own publications. This is
    where open repositories are crucial, to provide access to
    research from the South that are otherwise inaccessible.

3. The Frandsen study focuses on biology journals and I am not
    sure what percentage of them are available to DC researchers
    through HINARI/AGORA. This would explain why researchers in
    this area would not need to rely on OA materials as much. But
    HINARI etc. are not OA programs, and local researchers will be
    left with nothing when the programs are terminated. OA is the
    only sustainable way to build local research capacity in the
    long term.

4. Norris et. al's (2008) "Open access citation rates and
    developing countries" focuses instead on Mathematics, a field
    not covered by HINARI and they conclude: "that the majority of
    citations were given by Americans to Americans, but the
    admittedly small number of citations from authors in
    developing countries do seem to show a higher proportion of
    citations given to OA Aarticles than is the case for citations
    from developed countries. Some of the evidence for this
    conclusion is, however, mixed, with some of the data pointing
    toward a more complex picture of citation behaviour."

Citation behaviour is complex indeed and more studies on OA's 
impact in the developing world are clearly needed. Davis' 
eagerness to pronounce that there is "No Benefit for Poor 
Scientists" based on one study is highly premature. If there 
should be a study showing that people in developing countries 
prefer imported bottled water over local drinking water, should 
efforts to ensure clean water supply locally be questioned?

Leslie Chan

____

* To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
* Subject: Open Access: No Benefit for Poor Scientists
* From: Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>
* Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:25:38 EST

Open Access has a moral agenda: to increase the flow of 
scientific information to researchers in developing nations. Yet 
a new study suggests that authors in developing countries are no 
more likely to write papers for Open Access journals and are no 
more likely to cite Open Access articles.

full article at:
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/01/14/oa-developing-nations/

Phil Davis