It is interesting that the publication of a condensed
version of
'Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or
Competition?' has received a repeat of the criticisms of the
original, completely disregarding the clarifications that
appeared on this list shortly afterwards. I apologise that I
do
not maintain a link to the previous response on my web site
and
so have to simply paste in the reply made at that time
below.
> For those who may have forgotten, here also is the
critique of
> (the long version of) that study:
>
> Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Critique
of PRC Study
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives
/162-guid.html
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5
795.html
This is what was posted in response to this criticism in
November
Response from Simon Inger and Chris Beckett.
Stevan Harnad, in his posting of 13th November to the
American
Scientist Open Access Forum list and copied to several
others,
raised a number of issues with our recently published,
aforenamed
research, which we felt should be addressed and clarified.
Stevan focuses his criticism on five main points:
1. The methodology deployed and the entire point of
conducting a
conjoint survey at all
2. Whether or not OA can be considered a product in any
meaningful
sense
3. The issue of bias
4. The statement of apparently obvious or banal findings
5. The validity of inferring cancellation behaviour from the
findings
Let's discuss these in order:
1. We decided to undertake a conjoint survey because we felt
that
other attitudinal surveys of what future intentions might be
were
highly prone to being bogged down exactly because surveyees
were
asked in absolute terms to what extent they would like one
scenario, and then another, without ever asking them to
choose
between them. A survey that asks people if they like steak
to
eat, and then asks if they like chicken to eat, is not as
powerful as a survey that asks them to choose between steak
and
chicken. Bring in another variable, such as, "how well
done do
you like your meat?" and you get a very different
answer
depending on whether the surveyee preferred steak or chicken
in
the first place. By combining these factors with others
through a
conjoint survey, you might just find out how bad the steak
has to
be before chicken tartare starts to command a market share!
We
hope this illustrates the whole purpose of the conjoint in
applying it to the situation that publishing currently
faces; it
forces people to reveal the true underlying factors in their
decision-making in a way that hasn't been done before.
2. Can articles in Open Access repositories be considered a
product and one that librarians may select instead of
journals?
Absolutely they can. Is the issue here that they are free
via OA,
or that they are not organised and packaged? If we were to
stand
on a street corner and give away mobile phones, they would
be
every bit as much as a product as one you paid for in a
shop.
Would we cause some people not to go into the shop and buy a
mobile - sure we would. Would some people not trust the
mobile we
gave them and buy one anyway - yes they would. Would some
people
use our mobiles as a spare and buy another anyway - yes they
would do that too. A survey might tell you in what
proportions
people would undertake these actions. But you can be certain
that
at least some of the people would use the mobile we gave
them and
postpone or cancel the acquisition of a paid-for phone. So
we
believe that articles via OA, even though they are free, are
still very much a product. So perhaps they should not be
considered as a product because they are not organised into
product-shaped offerings, like journals are. That may be so,
for
now, but at the same time we are aware of organisations that
are
building products which combine the power of OAIPMH (and the
crawling power of Google); existing abstracting &
indexing
databases; publisher operated link servers; and library
operated
link servers: to build an organised route to OA materials -
a
route that would allow a non-subscriber of a journal article
to
be directed to the free OA repository version instead. Once
these
products exist we are sure our research indicates that
*some*
librarians at least will actually switch to OA versions for
*some* of their information needs, while others will
continue to
purchase the journal product for a whole raft of reasons and
others will provide, i.e. acquire, both options.
3. The whole Open Access debate evokes an emotional response
from
publishers, librarians and researchers on both sides of the
debate. At the same time, so does the word
"cancellation". For
that matter, so does the phrase "serials crisis".
We wanted to
avoid using all of these phrases in the research so as not
to
cloud people's judgement in favour of their beliefs alone.
This
is one way of avoiding one type of bias. Specifically the
type of
bias we sought to eliminate was an emotional bias, not a
bias for
or against OA per se. It can be equally well argued that
another
survey should be done with these words actually mentioned.
The
results may well be different. But no more or less valid
than
ours - such a survey would be measuring a different thing.
It is
up to each individual reader of the report to decide which
kind
of response and hence survey they would prefer.
4. The critique states that some of the findings are obvious
and
banal. "The fact that everyone would like something for
free
rather than paying for it", for example. In fact the
survey shows
that not everyone would prefer that. Even in a completely
like
for like situation. Possibly because people are suspicious
of
free things. Much more important, however, is how the
decision
becomes qualified by other factors - *and to what extent*
they
are qualified. (Would you like free raw chicken for dinner
or
paid-for cooked chicken?) Look closely and the results show
that
the lure of "free" has only so much pulling power,
and a
combination of other factors pull more potently against it.
So in
themselves the importance of each of the attributes has
limited
value - it is in combination that their true meaning comes
through.
5. So, can we infer cancellation behaviour from the results?
Yes,
we can. Because it is unrealistic to expect that everyone
that
expresses a preference for acquiring a product that looks
very
much like content on OA repositories would still continue to
acquire a paid-for version. Some will, of that we have very
little doubt. But likewise some won't. To that end I think
we
*can infer cancellation will occur*. It may be after someone
has
provided an organisational layer on top of the repositories.
It
may be after improved librarian awareness of the alternative
has
occurred. And it may require way more than 15% of the
material to
be available on OA.
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