From: Philip Davis <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 13:18:52 -0400

I don't usually agree with David, but I think his analysis of this
report is accurate and perceptive. There are some situations where
surveys accurately predict real behavior: this is not one of them.

Personally, I believe that the attempt to make a causal statement
linking open access and cancelation decisions is futile simply because
cancelation decisions are complex, involve many different factors, and
are based on retrospective and longitudinal data.

There *is* an argument to be made that freely accessible articles
located on a large portal (viz. PMC) would lead to decreased
readership on publisher websites. Librarians base their cancelation
decisions, in part, on publisher-provided usage data. Hence, we can
imagine an indirect link between OA policy and cancelation working
through usage as an intermediary. The best way to state this is "OA is
a contributing cause to subscription cancelation". The wrong way to
state it is that "OA causes cancelation". Similarly, it is also
disingenuous to make a negative causal statement, i.e. "There is
absolutely no evidence to show that OA causes cancelation".
Technically, this is a correct statement, but it assumes a direct,
deterministic causal connection between OA and cancellation. It would
be akin to claiming -- as special industry groups have made:

Cigarettes don't cause cancer.
Guns don't kill. People kill.
There is absolutely no evidence that consuming soft drinks
(soda/pop/Coke) cause obesity

David is right that these survey studies do not accurately reflect
actual behavior and that the smoking gun is just not found in the
data. He is correct. On the other hand, drawing eyeballs from a
journal to a public repository poses many risks that we need to
acknowledge. Publishers miss the opportunity to point readers to other
related articles on their site. They miss an opportunity to convey
public service announcements and advertisements. They miss the
opportunity to draw readers to participation in conferences and
society membership. You may be cynical and say this is nothing but
marketing and profit-making. I call it building a community.

--Phil Davis


On Jun 7, 2012, at 8:57 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 16:31:56 +0100
>
> This survey reminds me of one carried out by Chris Beckett and Simon
> Inger back in 2007.  Both were surveys of libraries carried out on
> behalf of publisher associations, both appeared to suggest that
> six-month embargoes would trigger massive rounds of cancellations, and
> both took no account of what actually happens in reality.
>
> There are a growing number of journals that already make their content
> freely available after six months.  These journals make the content
> available ether through their own websites, through others (such as
> PubMedCentral), or both.  Some of them have been doing so since well
> before the Beckett and Inger study so we potentially have six years of
> data to test the hypothesis that a six-month embargo could lead to
> subscription losses in the order of 44%.  We also have extensive
> experience in some fields of what happens to subscriptions if
> peer-reviewed copies are made available immediately on publication.
>
> As far as I know, there is no evidence to suggest that six months
> embargoes have led to 44% reductions in subscriptions as predicted by
> this latest survey.  The journals that make their content available
> after six months appear to be thriving and are sustainable.  If I have
> missed the evidence please let me know.
>
> So, what do you do if you discover that your survey results do not
> necessarily reflect reality?  Well, I guess that if the results match
> your ideological bent you ignore the discrepancy and issue press
> releases.  If you are interested in actually looking at behaviour you
> try to dig a little deeper.  One can begin to think of a number of
> possible reasons for this discrepancy, including:
>
> 1. Librarians don't realise that the material is available six months
> after publication (unlikely, surely)
> 2. The journals that make material available tend to be in biomedical
> fields - perhaps these areas are less susceptible to cancelations.
> But it doesn't explain high-energy physics and economics where green
> OA copies of all papers in some journals can be found without embargo.
> 3. People don't always do what they say they do in surveys.
>
> The trouble is that in the cases where six month embargoes have been
> tried they give results that completely fail to match the results of
> the survey.  Until we come to terms with why this is the case I find
> it hard to see how we can take the survey at face value.
>
> Best wishes
>
> David