Is open access the future for research in a digital world?

This is a report from my Medium site https://medium.com/@borganstein

The Information SuperHighway

The current trend in digital research, open access publishing and the explosion of ‘alternative’ methods of disseminating information would suggest that it is. The digital world allows for an increasing amount of interconnectedness and this means that the dissemination of information becomes easier and easier. Before this explosion of social technology, or the internet as it is more commonly known, publishing your research was expensive and time consuming. It was only open to researchers who had the finances to afford it. While the shift over the last decade to pure digital journals has made paper journals antiquated, the business model for these journals stayed the same. This model relies on a user pays system that often has exorbitant pricing. The pricing inhibits the ability of a researcher or individual to access and utilise that piece of research (Harnad et al 2004). This model of publishing created a walled garden that hampered the circulation of knowledge and affected its impact on both wider societal level and on other pieces of research. The open access movement is attempting to change this, through the fact that open access helps research have a greater impact. It is this question that will be investigated in the following piece of work, through a discussion of open access, the digital world and the impact that digital research has (Harnad et al 2004).

Locked, Closed systems do not help anyone!

What is Open Access (OA)?

Open Access is the movement that attempts to create a system whereby all literature published is available to download, link to, copy, distribute, print, index without any legal, financial or technical obstructions (Krishnamurthy 2008). This movement is an attempt to remove one of the major barriers for scholars and researchers in accessing high quality research focused content. The availability of access to the internet, and therefore the means to access this literature, is a requirement which does mean that some people do not have access. This is a specific problem with many so called ‘third world’ countries that either do not have reliable access to the internet or the cost is prohibitive. There are two main different types of open access; one, is ‘gold’ open access and the second, is ‘green’ open access. Gold open access means publishing your article in an open access journal, this makes it freely available. Green open access is where you publish your article in a pay-for ‘traditional’ journal, but you archive your work in an open access repository or other accessible medium such as a personal website (Harnad et al. 2004). According to Harnad et al. only five percent of journals are completely open access or ‘gold’, though over ninety percent of journals are ‘green’. Even though the vast majority of journals are ‘green’ and allow researchers to self-archive, less than twenty percent of researchers actually do (2004).

Digital addiction!

The digital world is essential to life in the 21st century (Graham & Wood 2003).
It is essential because digital spaces pervade every aspect of our social, work and private lives especially in the western world. Though increasingly this applies to the entire planet as access to the internet increases (Internet Live Stats 2015). It can be said that we live in an information age where information is accessible across a wide variety of platforms and languages. This information age is defined by the near limitless access to information for anyone who has the ability to connect to the internet. At an ever increasing rate our very existence depends on this ephemeral space as education, health, surveillance, finances and the way businesses operate all depend on the way that society is digitally interconnected. This means that the way information is stored, shared and analysed is substantially different to previous decades where communication was much slower. For example on how digitally connected this world currently is we can look at Facebook. It is the single largest social media platform on the planet with approximately 1.49 billion users monthly. This means that on a monthly basis approximately a seventh of the entire world population logs onto the social media platform. While this is quite a lot of people, it highlights just how many people still do not have access to the internet. This digital divide is a problem for the open access movement as well as digital social research as it prevents social researchers from gaining a completely representative sample. Facebook is trying to solve this problem by attempting to bring internet access to everyone via their internet.org program (Facebook 2015a; 2015b).

The impact can sometimes be negative

Defining impact is not a straightforward endeavour especially in an academic context.

Javey states that there is no generally accepted definition of academic impact, nor an agreed upon metric to measure it (2012). Though impact in a general sense can be likened to the ripples that occur within a body of water after something hits the surface. The heavier the weight, the more ripples and the wider that they travel. This is a direct analogy to what happens to the research community once a piece of research is published. Javey puts forward that academic impact is the combination of importance and influence. Importance being the relevance and significance of the particular research field. Influence can be easily defined to be the contribution that the individual researcher has on the specific field of study (Javey 2012). Connecting Javey to the ripples analogy the ‘heavier’ the piece of research the more influence it will have. Though according to the Australian Research Council, research impact is:

“the demonstrable contribution that research makes to the economy, society, culture, national security, public policy or services, health, the environment, or quality of life, beyond contributions to academia”

• ARC 2015 pg. 2

As you can see here are two widely different interpretations on what research impact actually means. Javey looks at purely the effect on other research, where the Australian Research Council looks at a wider societal impact (Javey 2012; ARC 2015). Research impact should include both, this is the only way that a full picture can be viewed on how exactly a piece of research affects the world.

Traditional measure!

How do you measure impact?

There are numerous methods to measuring academic impact of research and one of the traditional metrics used is a citation count. This simply counts the number of times a particular scholarly work has been cited, the higher the number the greater the impact. Some key citation databases are Scopus, Web of Science, and of course Google Scholar. There are other types of traditional impact metrics such as h-index, which are considered an aggregate citation count. What these traditional metrics fail to measure is the overall or public impact of research. They also generally cannot measure other types of publications such as books. A metric that is more suited to the information and open access age is altmetrics. Altmetrics measure at the individual article level as opposed to the journal level, they provide data from multiple sources such as citations, downloads, and social diffusion through media, blogs and social media platforms (Altmetrics 2015). They could be considered an open metric as they use freely available data from the social web. The question of whether Twitter usage is comparable to the traditional metric of citation counts was investigated by Eysenbach. He found that within certain limitations tweets are accurate at predicting whether articles would be cited in the future. These limitations are to do with timing and access to content. Even with the limitations it suggests that social media platforms can be an excellent resource when trying to establish the exact wider societal impact of research (Eysenbach 2011).

As you can see altmetrics can be an excellent way of measuring the academic as well as societal impact of a piece of research. For open access to be the future of research in the digital world, it must have more of an impact than traditional publishing. There are numerous studies espousing the effect that publishing in open access environments leads to a greater impact both academically as well as in a wider societal context (Craig et al 2007). The following three papers will highlight the quantitative reasons why open access is the future of research in the digital world.

Antelman in a 2004 study investigated articles across four different fields of study. These included philosophy, political science, electrical and electronic engineering, and mathematics. She compared whether researchers who made their articles freely available had a greater citation rate than those who did not (Antelman 2004). The results found that across a wide variety of fields of study articles published in an open access manner had a much greater research impact than those articles that were published in non-open access journals. Since this particular study did not utilise altmetrics, it is difficult to assess the wider societal impacts. Even so the results are still valuable considering the continued reliance on traditional metrics in the wider research community when it comes to research impacts. She highlighted a specific study by Steve Lawrence called ‘Online or Invisible’ that was freely available in a pre-print format well before being officially published ‘Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact’ (Lawrence 2001). By the time it was published it had already had over 700 citations and had more citations than its differently named officially published work. While this is only one example it highlights the power and potential of open access (Antelman 2004; Lawrence 2001). At the time of writing this could not be verified, as it seems the official version has had more citations in Google Scholar than the pre-print version. This could be due to age with the article being over a decade old, or Google Scholar could index citations differently to Web of Science (See search 1, and search 2 for verification).

Lawrence in his 2001 piece found an incredible 336 percent increase when published freely online as opposed to offline articles published in the same location. Lawrence used conference papers rather than journal articles and as such are not peer-reviewed. Though Lawrence does highlight that conference articles are formal pieces of writing and can sometimes be considered more prestigious than journals. Lawrence analysed over 119’000 conference articles within the computer science field and the results show a clear significant correlation between amount of citations and whether the article is freely available online (Lawrence 2001). Harnad and Brody found that there was an impact advantage for publishing in an open access journal as compared with a non-open access journal (2004). Their methodology varies in that they look at individual open access articles and non-open access articles within the same non-open access journal. This allows, according the Harnad and Brody, to compare like for like, this means that variables such as subject matter, different journals are accounted for. It is stressed that not all fields of study have been analysed though they posit that the other disciplines will have a similar impact advantage for publishing open access. While none of these studies utilised altmetrics, there is enough evidence to suggest that highly cited work will have an eventual impact through social media platforms as well as personal websites (Eysenbach 2011). As you can see there are many different studies that reach the conclusion that publishing in an open access environment leads to greater research impact as well as a wider societal impact.

Research in the digital world has exploded over the last decade as digital technologies have created more and more unique opportunities (Dutton 2013). The digital world, and the technologies that underpin it have fundamentally changed the way that people interact and share information. As is evidenced by a plethora of social media platforms that are primarily focussed to allow people to connect and share life’s moments (Shah, Cappella & Neumann 2015). Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+ are designed to allow people to share photos, or small snapshots into their own lives. This ability to be interconnected across large swathes of distance, disregarding geographical boundaries and even languages (See Google Translate, Microsoft Translator) has fundamentally changed the expectation that people have in regard to access to information. The more embedded these connective technologies become, the more connected that people become to information, the more reliant they become on that access. There is a definite connection between the ubiquitous rise of the digital world, movement into digital online journals and as it became easier to share and connect, the rise of the open access movement (Craig et al 2007; Dutton 2013; Shah, Cappella & Neumann 2015).

These were disruptive technologies before they became mainstream!

Is Disruption necessary?

Disruptive digital technologies are at the forefront of innovation and open access is a disruptive digital innovation (Lewis 2012). Disruptive innovations can be defined as the process by which a new technology that creates a new avenue of progress as well as negating the original technology. A perfect contemporary example is that of Uber. It is a disruptive innovation within the passenger transport business. It is directly competing against the established Taxi businesses, and is disrupting the way they normally do business. In much the same way open access is changing the face of scholarly publishing and while this is a disruptive process it is a requirement for positive forward momentum. It is inevitable that open access will become the standard for publishing research, as it both helps the author as well as the audience (Lewis 2012). It will allow for the best possible outcome in terms of research impact as well as a wider societal impact. Returning to the previous analogy, open access technologies will allow research to make the biggest ripples in the body of water that is the world.

In conclusion, it has been shown through looking at the digital world, open access and the measuring of the impact of research, that open access is the future of research in the digital world. The fundamental nature of the digital world means that sharing information, sharing knowledge is at the centre of what it means to define digital spaces. While there is a long way to go when it comes to the open access movement, it has been shown repeatedly via many different methods that publishing through an open access environment gives you a greater academic as well as wider social impact. The way that research impact is measured is also going through a fundamental shift to realign with aforementioned core digital tendencies of sharing and connecting. Altmetrics leverages this interconnectedness to measure exactly how influential a singular piece of research has been and will be. The potential that open access has to transform social science and specifically digital research is nearly limitless.

Author’s Note:

While all attempts were made to utilise open access material, there are some articles that are unfortunately behind paywalls.

http://www.gratisography.com/

References

Antelman, K 2004, ‘Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?’ College & Research Libraries, vol. 65, no. 5, pp.372–382. Available at: http://crl.acrl.org/content/65/5/372.abstract.

Altmetrics 2015, viewed 8 October 2015, available at http://www.altmetric.com/whatwedo.php

ARC 2015, viewed 8 October 2015, available at http://www.arc.gov.au/research-impact-principles-and-framework

Craig I D, Plume A M, McVeigh M E, Pringle J, and Amin M 2007, ‘Do open access articles have greater citation impact?A critical review of the literature’, Journal of Informetrics, vol. 1, no. 3, pp.239–248. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1751157707000466.

Dutton, W. H 2013, ‘The social shaping of digital research’,International Journal of Social Research Methodology, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 177–195. doi: 10.1080/13645579.2013.774171

Eysenbach, G 2011, ‘Can tweets predict citations? Metrics of social impact based on Twitter and correlation with traditional metrics of scientific impact’. Journal of medical Internet research, vol 13, pp. 1–23.

Facebook 2015a, Stats, viewed 8 October 2015 http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/

Facebook 2015b, About, viewed 8 October 2015 <www.internet.org>

Graham, S, and David W. 2003 ‘Digitizing surveillance: categorization, space, inequality’. Critical Social Policy, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 227–248.

Harnad, S and Brody, T 2004 Comparing the impact of Open Access (OA) vs. non-OA articles in the same journals. D-Lib Magazine. 10.

Harnad S, Brody T, Vallieres F, Carr L, Hitchcock S, Gingras Y, Oppenheim C, Stamerjohanns H, and Hilf E R 2004 ‘The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access’, Serials Review, vol. 30, no. 4, pp.310–314. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0098791304001480.

Internet Live Stats 2015 Internet Users, viewed 8 October 2015 http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/

Javey, A 2012, ‘Measuring Academic Impact’, ACS Nano, vol. 6, no. 8, pp.6529–6529. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn303711b\nhttp://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nn303711b\nhttp://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/nn303711b.

Krishnamurthy, M 2008, ‘Open access, open source and digital libraries: A current trend in university libraries around the world’, Program: electronic library and information systems, vol. 42, no. 1, pp.48–55. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/00330330810851582.

Lawrence, S 2001, ‘Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact’, Nature, vol, 411, no. 6837, pp.521–521. Available at: http://www.nature.com.globalproxy.cvt.dk/nature/journal/v411/n6837/full/411521a0.html\nhttp://www.nature.com.globalproxy.cvt.dk/nature/journal/v411/n6837/pdf/411521a0.pdf.

Lewis, D.W 2012 ‘The inevitability of open access’, College & Research Libraries, vol.73, no.5, pp.493–506. Available at: http://crl.acrl.org/content/73/5/493.abstract\nhttp://crl.acrl.org/content/73/5/493.short.

Shah, D. V, Cappella, J. N and Neuman, W. R 2015 ‘Big Data, Digital Media, and Computational Social Science: Possibilities and Perils’,The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 659, no. 1, pp. 6–13. doi: 10.1177/0002716215572084