Study: Students drawn toward free services when researching
When Taneisha Upshaw doesn’t know how to begin a paper, the sociology senior turns to a source she knows wouldn’t let her down — the Main Library.
Upshaw said she uses the library to access scientific and medical journals she would otherwise have to pay to use in her papers.
“Just surfing the Internet, you always find something that you have to pay for,” Upshaw said. “The library normally has a lot that are free.”
Philip Davis, a communication doctoral student at Cornell University, said research dating back to 2001 showed free articles, such as the ones Upshaw uses, were cited two to seven times more often than those available through a subscription.
To test the connection, Davis led research by randomly changing the access status of 247 articles in 11 scientific journals’ Web sites to open access.
His team measured how many times the articles were downloaded, the number of unique visitors to the article and how many times it was cited.
Results showed open access articles reached more readers than those with an attached fee, but not that those articles were cited more frequently, Davis said.
“A lot of citation goes on whether or not they have access to the full article,” he said.
Ilana Blumberg, assistant professor of humanities at James Madison College, said students should use resources provided by MSU libraries.
“There is an abundance of free material (and) there is always a way to gain access to help in their course, like through the libraries,” Blumberg said.
Staff writer Kayla Habermehl contributed to this report.
Published on Sunday, September 7, 2008
Comments
Philip Davis
09/10/08 @ 12:21pm
While I thank you for covering our article, I think that you missed the point of the research. Our article tested the entrenched dogma that freely-available scientific articles are cited more frequently because they are more accessible than subscription-based articles. Prior research was unable to discern the direction of cause and effect. Better articles – that is more citable – may be more likely to appear freely available.
Our research illustrates that freely-available articles may be downloaded (read) more often, but that does not translate into more citations. Why? The vast majority of authors of scientific articles are located at institutions (like Michigan State) that have excellent access to the world’s research literature, thanks in part to the millions of dollars that research institutions pay each year for journal subscriptions.
I encourage you to read the original article:
Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial