Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship. James A. Evans. Science 18 July 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5887, pp. 395 – 399
Der Soziologe Evans hat durch eine Analyse des Web of Science herausgefunden, dass unsere e-only-Verhaltensmuster nicht unbedingt wissenschaftsfördernd ist, da desto weniger zitiert wird desto mehr elektronisch vorhanden ist:
…as more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles.
Woran das liegt?
The forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present scholarship. Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon.
Sind die tollen Backfile-Archive, die wir (oder die DFG) kaufen, also unnütz oder sogar kontraproduktiv?
What is the effect of online availability of journal issues? It is possible that by making more research more available, online searching could conceivably broaden the work cited and lead researchers, as a collective, away from the „core“ journals of their fields and to dispersed but individually relevant work. I will show, however, that even as deeper journal back issues became available online, scientists and scholars cited more recent articles; even as more total journals became available online, fewer were cited. [Fettdruck durch mich]
Nachtrag: Joe Esposito schreibt dazu in liblicense (Fettdruck durch mich):
To raise the impact factors for research *and any other media* is not a matter of online vs. print or open access vs. toll-access, but about marketing vs. marketing: a competition for the attention of the targeted user base. Authors publish with the services that give them broadest distribution. Currently that primarily means the most prestigious toll-access journals.
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