Wednesday, June 22, 2011

What I Learned at SLA: Mathematicians Publishing and Collaboration

At the SLA conference, Kris Fowler presented results of a survey of mathematicians that she conducted. She used Web of Science to find people who had published in mathematics journals and contacted a random sample of them for an online survey.

She had a lot of findings about how people used online tools and collaborated online. One of her big findings was about open access journals coming of age. The mathematicians' reasons for choosing one journal or another were basically the same regardless of whether the journal was open access or subscription. Open access journals weren't just for open access die hards. About a third of the mathematicians indicated that they had published in an open access journal. The main reasons for choosing to submit to a particular journal had to do with reputation and audience, with open access way down on the list for importance.

The survey included a follow-up question asking people who published in open access journals to write the name(s) of the open access journal(s). About a quarter of the journals the mathematicians listed were not open access journals. If I heard correctly, this was much better than a previous survey (not necessarily of mathematicians), in which two thirds of the "open access" journals that people listed were not actually open access.


I liked her presentation a lot. She gathered information beyond just her own library or own institution and did it without having a big grant. Apparently other people also liked what she did. Aside from the article she's preparing to submit to a peer-reviewed journal, she's slated to provide a write-up in Notices of the AMS.

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