Measuring cumulating research impact loss across fields and time

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, [identity deleted] wrote: It is based on the 336% impact-loss estimate from the Lawrence study (bottom-left corner). It simply cumulates that impact-loss to show how big it really is, and how it is growing with time. With collaborators at UQaM, Southampton, Oldenburg and Loughborough we are now extending the Lawrence study (which was on a sample from computer science) to the entire 10-year ISI database from 1992-2002 (about ten million articles) across all disciplines, in order (1) to show the relative growth of open access across time, by discipline, and (2) to estimate the relative impact advantage (in terms of citation counts) that open access provides, across time, by discipline. Our method is first to compute the citation count for each of the ten million articles indexed in the ISI database (using an algorithm that takes each indexed article's reference list and fuzzy-matches each cited article to the article it cites, whenever that too is in the database). Then we send a software agent to the web to check, for each of those ten million articles (again by fuzzy-matching), whether a full-text of it is accessible toll-free on the web. We then compare, display and extrapolate, year by year, field by field, journal by journal, (1) the number and (2) citation counts for articles that are and are not openly accessible. These will be the actual data, replacing the Lawrence estimate in that slide. We will then convert those impact losses into research income losses for universities and research institutions, and use those data to show university administrators, quantitatively, why it is that they need to extend existing "publish or perish" policy to "publish *and* provide open access to your publications" (in order to maximize research impact -- and income). The hypothesis is that the only thing holding back immediate universal open-access provision by researchers and their institutions today is ignorance about (1) the magnitude of the needless accumulating impact losses, and about (2) the simple, legal, and virtually cost-free way that those losses can be immediately reversed through the dual open-access strategy of (i) publishing in an open-access journal wherever a suitable one exists (5%), and (ii) self-archiving all toll-access publications otherwise (95%). Meanwhile, keep using those powerpoints to encourage open-access provision! Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Post discussion to: september98-forum(a)amsci-forum.amsci.org Dual Open-Access Strategy: BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0021.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0028.gif