Part of the Open Citation Project
Project leader: Steven Harnad
Paul Ginsparg (Los Alamos National
Laboratory), Joe
Halpern (Cornell), Carl Lagoze
(Cornell), Wendy
Hall (Southampton), Les
Carr (Southampton).
Ian Hickman
(Southampton),
Tim Brody
(Southampton)
Los Alamos National Laboratory
eprint Archive
Written by Tim
Brody, last updated on
March 06 2001 11:20:25.
eprint archives have now been around for some time, the largest of
which, the Los Alamos Physics Archive, has been accepting submissions
since 1991. So why have eprints not taken over from the traditional
publication process, or at least become as popular? What is the
relationship between the publication process and the submissions
to eprint archives? Do author's receive better exposure for submitting to
an archive? How does peer-review effect the eprint archive?
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What was analysed
The Los Alamos Physics Archive is a publically accessible store of
published and unpublished papers submitted by scientists from around the
world. First established in the early 1990s the archive has grown to
contain 130000 papers and to receive over 30000 "hits" per day. To
alleviate pressure on the main archive there are a number of mirror sites
around the world, including one at the University of Southampton. It is
the data held at this mirror that we have analysed.
All analyses are based on two sets of data; the entire archive and a
series of incremental updates to the archive (mirror updates). The entire
archive has been running for 10 years, a period of time such that the way
that author's use the archive may have changed. With little history
embedded in the system to go with "what we see today", it would be
difficult to attribute changes in behaviour over time - and equally to
illimenate the effects of changing behaviour on analysis performed on the
entire archive.
The data set of incremental changes has been gathered over a period of
7 months, covering around 20,000 submissions. This period of time is
relatively short compared to the lifetime of published papers (when the
time between initially submitting the article and having it published can
be upwards of 8 months). It is especially short when measuring what
happens to these articles over time - only around 2000 of those articles
will have been monitored for 7 months.
What are we investigating?
- Is there a relation between number of times a paper is
downloaded and number of citations?
(31/08/2000)
- How often are papers changed and updated after initial
submission? How extensive are the changes?
(31/08/2000)
- What proportion of preprints are replaced by peer
reviewed reprints?
(31/08/2000)
- What proportion of papers are submitted to the archive
only after peer review?
(31/08/2000)
- Are there differences in patterns of usage between peer
reviewed and non-papers?
(31/08/2000)
- How does peer review impact citation patterns?
(31/08/2000)
- Do links have an impact on citation?
(31/08/2000)
Further Questions
(31/08/2000) |
Data Analysis
Relationship between submissions
and publications
(31/08/2000)Paper Distribution between archive areas
(07/09/2000)Behaviour of updates to papers
(31/08/2000)Analysis of Papers Submitted December 1999
(31/08/2000)The Typical Life of a Scientific Paper
(31/08/2000)Code Reference
(31/08/2000)Author Analysis
(07/09/2000)Impact Assessment
(31/08/2000)Citation Analysis
(31/08/2000)Author Survey
(17/10/2000)Citation Validity
(07/09/2000)
Results
Latency of Citations (31/08/2000)Embryology of Research Articles (31/08/2000)India Presentation [Powerpoint] (13/09/2000)
Relevent Information
Relevent Information (12/09/2000)
Web Site Features
Comments (31/08/2000)Citation Search
"And I can't tell you the rest until the journal comes out."
T. J. PICKELL/AT&T LABS
(as "borrowed" off www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5382/1459)
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