On Eggs and Citations

---

Update Jan 1, 2010: See Gargouri, Y; C Hajjem, V Larivière, Y Gingras, L Carr,T Brody & S Harnad (2010) “Open Access, Whether Self-Selected or Mandated, Increases Citation Impact, Especially for Higher Quality Research”
Update Feb 8, 2010: See also "Open Access: Self-Selected, Mandated & Random; Answers & Questions"

---

Failing to observe a platypus laying eggs is not a demonstration that the platypus does not lay eggs.

You have to actually observe the provenance, ab ovo, of those little newborn platypusses, if you want to demonstrate that they are not being engendered by egg-laying.

Failing to observe a significant OA citation Advantage within a year of publication (or a year and a half -- or longer, as the case may be) with randomized OA does not demonstrate that the many studies that do observe a significant OA citation Advantage with nonrandomized OA are simply reporting self-selection artifacts (i.e., selective provision of OA for the more highly citable articles.)

To demonstrate the latter, you first have to replicate the OA citation Advantage with nonrandomized OA (on the same or comparable sample) and then demonstrate that randomized OA (on the same or comparable sample) eliminates that OA citation Advantage (on the same or comparable sample).

Otherwise, you are simply comparing apples and oranges (or eggs and expectations, as the case may be) in reporting a failure to observe a significant OA citation Advantage in a first-year (or first 1.5-year) sample with randomized OA -- along with a failure to observe a significant OA citation Advantage for nonrandomized OA either, for the same sample (on the grounds that the nonrandomized OA subsample was too small):

The many reports of the nonrandomized OA Citation Advantage are based on samples that were sufficiently large, and on a sufficiently long time-scale (almost never as short as a year) to detect a significant OA Citation Advantage.

A failure to observe a significant effect with small, early samples, on short time-scales -- whether randomized or nonrandomized -- is simple that: a failure to observe a significant effect: Keep testing till the size and duration of your sample of randomized and nonrandomized OA is big enough to test your self-selection hypothesis (i.e., comparable with the other studies that have detected the effect).

Meanwhile, note that (as other studies have likewise found), although a year proved too short to observe a significant OA citation Advantage for randomized (or nonrandomized) OA, it did prove long enough to observe a significant OA download Advantage for randomized OA -- and that other studies have also reported that early download advantages correlate significantly with later significant citation advantages.

Just as mating more is likely to lead to more progeny for platypusses (by whatever route) than mating less, so accessing and downloading more is likely to lead to more citations for papers than accessing and downloading less.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum