SM:"Sue Thorn and I will shortly be publishing a report of a research study on the attitudes and behaviour of 1368 members of UK-based learned societies in the life sciences. 72.5% said they never used self-archived articles when they had access to the published version."
This makes sense. The self-archived versions are supplements, for those who don't have subscription access.
SM: "3% did so whenever possible, 10% sometimes and 14% rarely. When they did not have access to the published version, 53% still never accessed the self-archived version."
This is an odd category: Wouldn't one have to know what percentage of those articles -- to which these respondents did not have subscription access -- in fact had self-archived versions at all? (The global baseline for spontaneous self-archiving is around 15%) The way it is stated above, it sounds as if the respondents knew there was a self-archived version, but chose not to use it. I would strongly doubt that...
SM: "16% did so whenever possible."
That 16% sounds awfully close to the baseline 15% where it is possible, because the self-archived supplement exists. In that case, the right description would be that 100%, not 16%, did so. (But I rather suspect the questions were yet again posed in such an ambiguous way that it is impossible to sort any of this out.)
SM: "16% sometimes and 15% rarely. However, 13% of references were not in fact to self-archiving repositories - they included Athens, Ovid, Science Direct and ISI Web of Science/Web of Knowledge."
To get responses on self-archived content, you have to very carefully explain to your respondents what is and is not meant by self-archived content: Free online versions, not those you or your institution have to pay subscription tolls to access.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
