JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for LIS-ELIB Archives


LIS-ELIB Archives

LIS-ELIB Archives


LIS-ELIB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

LIS-ELIB Home

LIS-ELIB Home

LIS-ELIB  September 2005

LIS-ELIB September 2005

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research

From:

Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:42:53 +0100

Content-Type:

TEXT/PLAIN

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

TEXT/PLAIN (132 lines)

             ** Apologies for cross-posting **

Press Release: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/792

        Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research

        Stevan Harnad
        Moderator, American Scientist Open Access Forum
    http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html

        Professor of Cognitive Science
        Department of Electronics and Computer Science
        University of Southampton
        SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

        Chaire de recherche du Canada
        Centre de neuroscience de la cognition (CNC)
        Université du Québec à Montréal
        Montréal, Québec,  Canada  H3C 3P8
        [log in to unmask]
        http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/

The United Kingdom is not yet maximising the return on its public investment  in
research.  Research Councils UK (RCUK) spend  £3.5 billion pounds annually. The UK
produces at least 130,000 research journal articles per year, but it is not the
number of articles published that reflects the return on the UK?s investment:  A
piece of research, if it is worth funding and doing at all, must be not only
published, but used, applied and built upon by other researchers. This is called
?research impact? and a measure of it is the number of times an article is cited
by other articles (?citation impact?). 

But in order to be used and built upon, an article must first be accessed. A
published article is accessible only to those researchers who happen to be at
institutions that can afford to subscribe to the particular journal  in which it
was published. There are 24,000 journals  in all, and most institutions can only
afford a small fraction of them. In paper days, authors used to supplement this
paid access to their articles by mailing free reprints to any would-be users who
wrote to request them. The online age has made it possible to provide  free
?eprints? (electronic versions of the author?s draft) to all potential users who
cannot afford the journal version by ?self-archiving? them on the author?s own
institutional website.  

The online-age practice of self-archiving has been shown to increase citation
impact by a dramatic 50-250%, but so far only 15% of researchers are doing it. A
recent UK international  survey has found that 95% of authors would self-archive ?
but only if their research funders or their institutions required them to do it
(just as they already require them to ?publish or perish?). The solution is hence
obvious:

After lengthy deliberations first initiated in 2003 by the UK Parliamentary Select
Committee on Science and Technology,  RCUK have proposed to adopt a policy
requiring UK researchers to deposit, on their university's website, the final
author's draft of any journal article resulting from RCUK-funded research. The
purpose of the proposed policy would be to maximise the usage and impact of UK
research findings by making them freely accessible on the web ("open access") for
any potential users in the UK and worldwide who cannot afford paid access to the
published journal version.  How does this maximise the return on the UK public
investment in research?

It is not possible to calculate all the ways in which research generates revenue.
A good deal of it is a question of probability and depends on time: Although
everyone thinks of an immediate cure for cancer or a cheap, clean source of energy
as the kind of result we hope for, most research progresses gradually and
indirectly, and the best estimate of the size and direction of its progress is its
citation impact, for that reflects the degree of uptake of research results by
other researchers, in their own subsequent research. Citation impact is
accordingly rewarded by universities (through salary increases and promotion) and
by research-funders like RCUK (through grant funding and renewal); it is also
rewarded by libraries (through journal selection and renewal, based on a journal's
average citation "impact factor"). Counting citations is a natural extension of
the cruder measure of research impact: counting publications themselves ("publish
or perish").

If citations are being counted, it is natural to ask how much they are worth. 

The marginal dollar value of one citation was estimated by Diamond in 1986 to
range from $50-$1300 (US), depending on field and number of citations.  (An
increase from 0 to 1 citation is worth more than an increase from 30 to 31; most
articles are in the citation range 0-5.) If we convert from dollars to UK pounds
sterling (£27-£710) and update by 170% for inflation from 1986-2005, this yields
the range £46-$1207 as the marginal value of a UK citation today. Self-archiving,
as noted, increases citations by 50-250%, but, as also noted, only 15% of the
articles being published are being self-archived today.

We will now apply only the most conservative  ends of these estimates (50%
citation increase from self-archiving at £46 per citation) to the UK's current
annual journal article output (and only for the approximately 130,000 UK articles
a year indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information, which covers only the
top 8000 of the world's 24,000 journals). If we multiply by the 85% of the UK's
annual journal article output that is not yet self-archived (110, 500 articles),
this translates into an annual loss of £2, 541, 500 in revenue to UK researchers
for not having done (or delegated) the few extra keystrokes per article it would
have taken to self-archive their final drafts. 

But this impact loss translates into a far bigger one for the British public, if
we reckon it as the loss of potential returns on its research investment. As a
proportion of the RCUK?s yearly £3.5bn research expenditure,  our conservative
estimate would be a 50% x 85% x £3.5.bn = £1.5bn worth of loss in potential
research impact. And that is without even considering the wider loss in revenue
from potential usage and applications of UK research findings in the UK and
worldwide,  nor the still more general loss to the progress of human inquiry.

The solution is obvious, and it is the one the RCUK is proposing: to extend the
existing universal 'publish or perish' requirement to 'publish and also
self-archive your final draft on your institutional website'.  Over 90% of
journals already endorse author self-archiving and the international author survey
-- plus the actual experience of the two institutions that have already adopted
such a requirement (CERN and University of Southampton ECS ) -- has shown that
over 90% of authors will comply.

The time to close this 50%-250% research impact gap is already well overdue. This
is the historic moment for the UK to set an example for the world , showing how to
maximise the return on the public investment in research in the online era.

How self-archiving increases citation impact:
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html  

How much a citation is worth:
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v11p354y1988.pdf 

How much time and effort is involved in self-archiving
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/ 

RCUK self-archiving policy proposal:
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp 

Directory of publishers' policies on author self-archiving:
http://romeo.eprints.org/ 

JISC user survey on self-archiving:
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/ 

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

May 2024
April 2024
January 2024
December 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
February 2022
December 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
May 2021
September 2020
October 2019
March 2019
February 2019
August 2018
February 2018
December 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
June 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
November 2016
August 2016
July 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
September 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
July 2001
June 2001
May 2001
April 2001
March 2001
February 2001
January 2001
December 2000
November 2000
October 2000
September 2000
August 2000
July 2000
June 2000
May 2000
April 2000
March 2000
February 2000
January 2000
December 1999
November 1999
October 1999
September 1999
August 1999
July 1999
June 1999
May 1999
April 1999
March 1999
February 1999
January 1999
December 1998
November 1998
October 1998
September 1998
August 1998
July 1998
June 1998
May 1998
April 1998
March 1998
February 1998
January 1998
December 1997
November 1997
October 1997
September 1997
August 1997
July 1997
June 1997
May 1997
April 1997
March 1997
February 1997
January 1997
December 1996
November 1996
October 1996
September 1996
August 1996
July 1996
June 1996
May 1996
April 1996
March 1996


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager