Re: STM Publisher Briefing on Institution Repository Deposit Mandates

[Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Sally Morris (Morris Associates) 
<sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Sue Thorn and I will shortly be publishing a report of a 
> research study on the attitudes and behaviour of 1368 members 
> of UK-based learned societies in the life sciences.
>
> 72.5% said they never used self-archived articles when they had
> access to the published version;

This makes sense. The self-archived versions are supplements, for 
those who don't have subscription access.

> 3% did so whenever possible, 10% sometimes and 14% rarely. 
> When they did not have access to the published version, 53% 
> still never accessed the self-archived version;

This is an odd category: Wouldn't one have to know what 
percentage of those articles -- to which these respondents did 
not have subscription access -- in fact had self-archived 
versions at all? (The global baseline for spontaneous 
self-archiving is around 15%; see, for example 
http://elpub.scix.net/data/works/att/178_elpub2008.content.pdf)

The way it is stated above, it sounds as if the authors knew 
there was a self-archived version, but chose not to use it. I 
would strongly doubt that...

> 16% did so whenever possible,

That 16% sounds awfully close to the baseline 15% where it *is* 
possible, because the self-archived supplement exists. In that 
case, the right description would be that 100% did so. (But I 
rather suspect the questions were again posed in such an 
ambiguous way that it is impossible to sort any of this out.)

> 16% sometimes and 15% rarely.  However, 13% of references were 
> not in fact to self-archiving repositories - they included 
> Athens, Ovid, Science Direct and ISI Web of Science/Web of 
> Knowledge.

To get responses on self-archived content, you have to very 
carefully explain to your respondents what is and is not meant by 
self-archived content: Free online versions, not those you *or 
your institution* have to pay subscription tolls to access.

Stevan Harnad