The July 2019 Cites & Insights (19:3) is now available for downloading at https://citesandinsights.info/civ19i3.pdf
This 48-page issue includes the following:
Four years of items on First Sale, Public Domain and CC0, Piracy and Nostalgia.
A year’s worth of audiofollies and a variety of other items from 2014, 2015 and 2016.
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The June 2019 Cites & Insights (19:2) is now available at https://citesandinsights.info/civ19i2.pdf
The 72-page issue includes:
A discussion of the new Key Facts tables, and a much longer discussion of how I use pivot tables in a template to make it possible to produce all three books from GOA4 within a few weeks after finishing the data gathering.
Probably the last Economics and Access roundup, since 2019 is probably the last year for Cites & Insights.
Why is this a very late June 2019 issue rather than a slightly early July 2019 issue? Because I don’t know how many issues it will take to shut things down nicely. This gives me a little flexibility.
What would it take to keep C&I going, I hear almost nobody asking?
I do plan to keep the GOA series going as long as SPARC finds it worth supporting and I believe I can do it well. I also plan to keep this blog going for a while–and I continue to be active on Facebook, Twitter and Mokum.
If plans do not change, I’ll keep the Cites & Insights site up for at least two years after the final edition of GOA or the final issue of C&I, whichever comes last. (And waltcrawford.name up for at least that long.)
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Readership figures for GOAJ3 (unfortunately missing most of today, 2/28, and the last day of each month)–and, for now, I’ll keep reporting on GOAJ2 as well.
All links available from the project home page, as always.
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You might think of this as a really tiny issue of Cites & Insights–and it’s the only one you’ll see in February or, almost certainly, March.
I’m roughly halfway through the initial scan of DOAJ journals for GOAJ4: Gold Open Access Journals 2013-2018 (“roughly”: I’ve done 6,000 and have 6,415 left to do). Seemed like a good point to pause, save off the first 6,000 (so I can save the “done” spreadsheet faster–in a second instead of two or three) and comment on a few things.
See this post: nearly all malware cases, including all from Indonesia and Malaysia, have been fixed.
In the October 2018 Cites & Insights, one of a group of small essays was titled “One I Do Not Plan to Cover,” explaining why I was ignoring PlanS (at least for the moment)–not even tagging items for later discussion.
Briefly, the reasons were that too much was being written for me to follow; that it’s European and I’m not; that I don’t know that I understand all the issues; that I’ve never published in APC-based OA journals (or in any peer-reviewed journals in quite a while); that I was seeing growing honesty from scholars of a sort I found disheartening; and that there was stuff about “academic freedom”that struck me as remarkable.
All those reasons are still valid, especially the penultimate one–and there’s another one that I predicted to myself and wanted to avoid.
That last one: I suspected the long knives would come out in force, attempting in various ways to undermine serious OA or any attempts to upset the current regime. That was a pretty safe prediction, to be sure…
As to the penultimate one: We’re seeing a lot of the Yabbuts come out: That is, “Oh, I’m all for OA, but...” Pretty much like “Some of my best friends are X, but…”
I suspect that around 705-80% of scholars-who-publish just don’t care (or in some cases know) about OA as something that affects them. They have their access, coming out of the library’s budget (aka Somebody Else’s Problem) and they don’t much care about wider distribution for their scholarship–as long as it gets cited and/or helps them get promoted.
I don’t think there’s anything new about the Yabbuts. I do think they’ve been made aware that something serious might actually happen, making the BUT more important.
There’s also another reason I’m staying away: I haven’t read PlanS, and from what I’ve been unable to avoid hearing about it, I suspect I wouldn’t be wholly in favor (e.g., provisions that effectively make it unfeasible for the thousands of very small academic and society journals with no formal funding) to keep going. And since I haven’t read the thing, I may be wrong…
So I’m staying away.
One final and somewhat blind note. I tagged an article that, if I didn’t misunderstand it in a brief skim, seemed to be seriously suggesting that one retired librarian should determine what articles should be included in review articles, and specifically biomed articles. Oh, not in those words, but arguing that articles in “predatory” journals–defined only by reference to The Lists–shouldn’t be included in review articles.
If I read it correctly, this is appalling. Here’s a counter proposal: no articles in any journal published by a publisher with an article that’s probably caused more lost lives (and recurrence of supposedly-obliterated diseases!) than all articles in Listed journals put together should be considered for reviews. Whoops: There goes 10% of the literature.
And, of course, I don’t really believe all Elsevier journals should be tarred because of one article that The Lancet took a long time–twelve years–to fully retract. That would be like smearing thousands of articles and hundreds of journals because one person thinks one of the journals looks bad, without providing any reason. Which is, of course, the whole thing with The Lists. [You can read a pretty good summation of the killer-article history in Wikipedia.)
Now I see that the Master of the Lists is writing for THE (Tabloid on Higher Education? I may have that wrong). And far too many people still treat the lists as significant.
Sigh.
Enough of this. Back to the journal scan: 9,415 left to go.
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Since there may not be another Cites & Insights for several months, I thought I’d do a quick wrapup of C&I readership for 2018–noting, as always, that counts are typically about 3% low (because all but the first five hours of the last day of each month are missing).
It hasn’t been a great year: only two issues so far have cleared the 1,000-download mark, and only one the 2,000-download. Oddly enough, the subject supplement to GOAJ3 was not one of them–and, in fact, has done very poorly. Month-to-month trends suggest that shutting down C&I may be happening on its own, little by little–but, including the oddity that every single issue gets some downloads each month (an oddity that makes me wonder whether some of those hits are crawlers that the statistics package fails to recognize as such), there were 150,223 downloads over the course of the year.
Here are the 2018 issues sorted by downloads:
| Issue | Count | Topic |
| civ18i2.pdf | 2,268 | Writing, Wikipedia |
| civ18i1.pdf | 1,716 | OA issues, audio prices |
| civ18i7.pdf | 427 | audio prices, small essays |
| civ18i6.pdf | 376 | Predator! |
| civ18i5.pdf | 260 | futurism, GOAJ commentary |
| civ18i4.pdf | 259 | GOAJ3 subject supplement |
| civ18i3.pdf | 201 | GOAJ3 ch, 1-7 |
| civ18i9.pdf | 137 | books and media |
| civ18i8.pdf | 131 | ethics |
These issues had at least 1,600 downloads in 2018 (including counts for “on” versions):
| Issue | Count | Topic |
| civ17i1.pdf | 3,233 | gray OA 2012-2016 |
| civ18i2.pdf | 2,268 | |
| civ14i7.pdf | 2,239 | investigating the lists |
| civ14i4.pdf | 2,173 | the sad case of jeffrey beall |
| civ13i3.pdf | 1,985 | acad. Library circ/ |
| civ16i1.pdf | 1,971 | ppppread. Article counts |
| civ12i4.pdf | 1,930 | futurism, public library closures |
| civ12i3.pdf | 1,872 | public library closures |
| civ13i10.pdf | 1,842 | books and library ROI |
| civ12i11.pdf | 1,670 | Google book settlement |
| civ12i5.pdf | 1,638 | fair use |
These issues have had at least 7,000 downloads since 2015 (including counts for “on” versions but not individual articles):
| Issue | Count | Topic |
| civ14i4.pdf | 21,781 | the sad case of jeffrey beall |
| civ14i7.pdf | 12,564 | investigating the lists |
| civ10i8.pdf | 10,321 | books and publishing |
| civ6i10.pdf | 9,596 | liblogs |
| civ12i2.pdf | 9,153 | social networks, misc. |
| civ12i8.pdf | 8,350 | blogging |
| civ8i7.pdf | 7,398 | various |
| civ15i9.pdf | 7,068 | gold oa 2011-2014 |
| civ14i5.pdf | 7,036 | ethics and access: the “sting” |
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Cites & Insights 18 (2018) is now available in paperback for the usual $35.00.
The 462-page 6×9″ paperback includes all nine issues of Volume 18, and adds indexes only available in the paperback.
If you’re a Lulu user or check the front page, look for the frequent discount codes…
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Cites & Insights 18:9 (December 2018) is now available for downloading at https://citesandinsights.info/civ18i9.pdf
The 36-page issue includes:
Notes on GOAJ4 and what it means for Volume 19 of Cites & Insights.
Not just “books, print vs. e” but a broader range of notes on books, including a couple of library-related items.
Two parts: magazine notes (including some anecdata about individual magazine changes) and other media notes.
That’s it. For the hundreds dozens one or two of you eagerly awaiting the print volume, index and all, I’ll post something when it’s available, probably in mid-December.
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If you’re unable to download any issues of Cites & Insights or, indeed, reach the home page:
It’s my fault. I may have mistakenly hit a key while getting ready to upload the December 2018 Cites & Insights and deleted the entire site on my host. And I’m not enough of an expert (putting it mildly!) to undo the deletion cleanly. I’ve asked for help from my host.
The site will be restored as soon as possible.
Thanks to Blake Carver’s fast work, the site is back. The fault was ENTIRELY mine, and LISHost continues to be a great place to host library-related sutes.
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The November 2018 Cites & Insights, volume 8, issue 8, is now available for downloading at https://citesandinsights.info/civ18i8.pdf
The 40-page issue consists of one essay:
Starting with the “grievance” hoax, continuing with other stings and peer review, “predatory” nonsense, open access, and various other ethical issues–and ending with some thoughts on society publishers and for-profit publishers.
Will there be a December 2018 issue to close out the volume? Hard to say. One way to help: VOTE. Make sure others VOTE. Some indications that our experiment in democracy hasn’t been completely swamped would be encouraging. I’m more likely to write when I’m not despairing for the soul of the nation…
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Cites & Insights 18:7 (October 2018) is now available for downloading at https://citesandinsights.info/civ18i7.pdf
The 24-page issue includes:
Half of this section is an informal commentary on a remarkable new free list of >35,000 open access journals (and other things) in the humanities and social sciences (mostly) from Jan Szczepanski. There are also commentaries on “when good scholars go bad”–why I think the new spate of articles Viewing With Alarm scholars at serious institutions with articles in “bad” journals are looking at the wrong side of the equation; the colors, and why I think two is enough; why I do not (currently) plan to cover the new Hot Topic in OA; whether you can or should be an OA observer without being an advocate [for or against] or a skeptic; why “Intersections”; and a comprehensive guide to really useful applications of blockchain in libraries. [Omitted for space and because I’m a coward: A suggestion that societies that depend on subscription revenues aren’t necessarily better than commercial publishers…]
This time around, I’m including median systems in each category: systems composed of median-priced components. You can assemble a complete (CD and LP) audiophile system for $1,918–or you can spend $832,223 before adding power conditioners and other extras.
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