Preference Surveys and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Do Users Prefer No Access To Postprint Access?

SM: "Stevan asserts that researchers who cannot afford access to the published version of articles are perfectly happy with the self-archived author's final version.

"Interestingly, in our survey of learned society members Sue Thorn and I found that most of our 1368 respondents did not, in fact, use authors' self-archived versions even when they had no access to the published version - 53% never did so, and only 16% did so whenever possible."

Sally does not always put her survey questions in the most transparent way.

If you really want to find out whether or not researchers are "happy" with the author's refereed, accepted final draft when they lack access to the published version you have to ask them that:

(1) "How often do you encounter online, in a search or otherwise, the author's free refereed, accepted final draft of a potentially relevant article to which you (or your institution) cannot afford paid full-text access?"

(2) "If you lack access to the published version of such a potentially relevant article, would you prefer to have no access at all, or access to the author's free refereed, accepted final draft?"

(3) "If you would prefer access to the author draft over no access at all, how strongly would you prefer it over no access at all?

That's the forthright, transparent way to put the exact contingencies we are addressing. No equivocation or ambiguity.

In contrast, I am sure that Sally's question about "How often do you use author drafts?" was just that: "How often do you use author drafts?" Not "How often do you encounter a potentially relevant article, but decline to use it because you only have access to the author draft and not the published version?"

Sally's responses -- which seem to say that 47% do use the author draft and 53% do not use the author draft -- fail to reveal whether the 53% who fail to use the author draft indeed fail to do so because, even though they have found a potentially relevant author draft free online, and lack access to the publisher draft, they prefer to ignore the potentially relevant author draft (this would be very interesting and relevant news if it were indeed true), or simply because they happen to be among the 53% who had never encountered a potentially relevant author draft free online when they had no access to the publisher version. (And could the 16% who did use the author draft "wherever possible" perhaps correspond to the well-known datum that only about 15% of all articles have freely accessible author drafts online)?

Surveys that obscure these fundamental details under a cloud of ambiguity are not revealing researchers' preferences but their own.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum