Thursday, July 17, 2008
An article in today's Economist notes that the long tail is missing from academic articles.
I expect most historical articles are not online because their publishers would like to get some revenue from them. However the consequence of such behavior is not the publishers getting revenue, but instead, my reading of the Economist's story, the articles witheld slip into irrelevancy through obscurity. That certainly appears to be the case in philosophy, where the most popular articles this century are the one's whose authors have made them accessible. ¶ 2:18 PM
He has found that as more journals become available online, fewer articles are being cited in the reference lists of the research papers published within them. Moreover, those articles that do get a mention tend to have been recently published themselves. Far from growing longer, the long tail is being docked.I have simple explanation for this phenomena. Although more articles are appearing online, the bulk historical articles are not online, so citations tend to be limited to the articles that are accessible online.
I expect most historical articles are not online because their publishers would like to get some revenue from them. However the consequence of such behavior is not the publishers getting revenue, but instead, my reading of the Economist's story, the articles witheld slip into irrelevancy through obscurity. That certainly appears to be the case in philosophy, where the most popular articles this century are the one's whose authors have made them accessible. ¶ 2:18 PM
