An interesting extract from Social Media in Academia, by George Veletsianos, conveying one reason why I’m instinctively cautious about open access. From loc 614-631:
empirical evidence relating to citation metrics indicates that OA articles may be cited earlier than NOA articles (Eysenbach, 2006; Zawacki-Richter, Anderson, & Tuncay, 2010), suggesting that OA may allow faster access to scholarly work and thereby accelerate scholarly dissemination and development.
As he goes on to write:
Such data may help scholars gain a more nuanced understanding of the impact and reach of their scholarship, provide transparency to the research community, and allow richer depictions of a scholar’s influence.
It’s not obvious to me that these are intrinsically good things. Whose agenda do they serve?
Categories: Digital Universities
