Open Access News

Tom Wilson, Open access and Weblogs – working together, Information Research Weblog, February 10, 2006.

We’ve had occasional instances of the value of Weblogs in spreading news about papers in Information Research and we have another at the moment. Nahyun Kwon’s paper on virtual reference service has been noted in a number of Weblogs and, as a direct result, the hits have soared to more than 2,400 in less than one month. By comparison, the other papers in the issue have an average hit rate of about 400. There’s a lesson here for authors – if you want your paper to be noticed, make sure it’s noticed in the ‘blogosphere’ – and you are the ones who will know which Weblog authors are likely to be interested, so get to it!

Comment. Good point. I’d only add that the best way to harness this power is to make the article OA. This works two ways. First, OA helps bloggers and other meme-spreaders (who might prefer to use listservs or private email) discover the work in the first place and learn that it’s interesting, important, and worth spreading. Second, OA helps them spread the word to other potential readers. Readers are much more likely to read the article –and spread the word further– if they receive a link to free online full-text than if they receive a link to a stop sign or pay-per-view page.