Open access books attract many more readers and slightly more citations - Leiden University

peter.suber's bookmarks 2019-01-31

Summary:

"Academics who offer their books free online reach many more readers and are cited slightly more often. Surprisingly enough, it has little effect on the sale of paper editions, positive or negative. ...

Remarkably enough, offering books free online has hardly any noticeable effect on the sale of paper versions. 'The assumption that publishing books via open access will generate a lot of free publicity, which will encourage readers to buy the books, doesn't seem to hold water.' But there is also little or no negative effect: an online version seems to have little or no impact on sales. That's probably because online readers are a different public, Snijder suspects....

Offering a book free online does not automatically lead to optimum use of the work, Snijder stresses. 'Most people rely on filter mechanisms to sort the wheat from the chaff.'  These could be library catalogues, mentions on social media, specialist websites or blogs by influential authors. 'The use and success of open access books is mainly determined by language, subject, infrastructure and trust.' "

Link:

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2019/01/open-access-books-attract-many-more-readers-and-slightly-more-citations

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.books oa.citations oa.advantage oa.books.sales oa.economics_of

Date tagged:

01/31/2019, 16:08

Date published:

01/31/2019, 11:08