A description of my research on the effects of open access on monographs. I have examined the effects on sales, usage by developing countries, the role of open licenses, and citations/altmetrics. The sheets contain links to the articles, which are freely available online.

1. MEASURING MONOGRAPHS Ronald Snijder,
25 November 2016

2. ABOUT ME
Who am I?
Ronald Snijder, 46, married to Dorien,
one daughter: Charlotte
What do I do?
Data architect – UWV (4 days/week)
Technical Coordinator – OAPEN Foundation (1 day/week)
External PhD candidate – CWTS (5 nights/week)

3. THE RESEARCH: MEASURING MONOGRAPHS
How to measure the impact of
open access on monographs?
Open access: freely available online
Monographs: main publication form in
Humanities, Social Sciences
Impact:
1. Usage – downloads, user groups
2. Economic sustainability – sales
3. Citations, altmetrics
 Main ‘laboratory’: OAPEN Library
(www.oapen.org)

4. MY RESULTS SO FAR
Several aspects:
Economic sustainability
It’s all about the money
Enhancing usage
Improving open access infrastructure
Impact
Most interesting for CWTS?
Remember: OA book impact =
1. usage
2. citations

5. ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY
Open access does not enhance nor diminish
sales – number of copies sold of OA group
vs. control group
Conclusion: OA is no threat, but this model is
not enhancing sustainability. Conform other
research: OAPEN-NL [1], OAPEN-UK [2],
Amsterdam Univ. Press [3]
The Influence of Open Access on Monograph Sales :
The experience at Amsterdam University Press -
LOGOS: The Journal of the World Book Community,
2014-11
 DOI: 10.1163/1878-4712-11112047
 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1190939

6. ENHANCE IMPACT: DISSEMINATION CHANNELS
OAPEN Library usage, by channel:
website: 27%
direct download: 73%
No influence from user group,
infrastructure; book language, subject.
Conclusion: put your metadata in the
user’s systems.
Modes of access : the influence of dissemination
channels on the use of open access monographs –
Information Research, 2014-09
• http://www.informationr.net/ir/19-3/paper638.html

7. IMPACT AFFECTED BY OPEN LICENSES?
Licenses in the OAPEN Library:
Free to read
Free to share (Creative Commons)
Compare the collection before and after DOAB
introduction. Be mindful of subject, language.
Conclusion: DOAB, not CC license has large
positive influence on usage
Better Sharing Through Licenses? Measuring the Influence of
Creative Commons Licenses on the Usage of Open Access
Monographs - Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly
Communication, 2015-03-10
• DOI: 10.7710/2162-3309.1187
Free to read
Open license:
free to share
OAPEN Library Directory of
OA Books

8. CAN WE MEASURE TYPES OF USERS?
Bibliometrics for books don’t function well.
Categorize users: Academic, Non profit,
Government, Business, General public
(probably), Unknown.
Method to quantify scientific and social
relevance. Also: look at usage patterns.
Measuring monographs: A quantitative method to
assess scientific impact and societal relevance –
First Monday, 2013-05
 DOI: 10.5210/fm.v18i5.4250

9. OA: MORE USE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?
Compare freely available books to
control group. There is a huge digital
divide between developing and
developed countries.
OA: higher usage by developing
countries.
Do developing countries profit from free books? :
Discovery and online usage in developed and
developing countries compared – Journal of
Electronic Publishing, 2013-11
 DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0016.103

10. MORE CITATIONS/ALTMETRICS FOR OA BOOKS?
Compare tweets and citations of OA
group vs. control group. All books are
published (online) for at least 5 years.
Small positive effect of OA on citations,
no effect on tweets. Larger influence by
subject and language. Weak correlation
between citations and tweets.
Revisiting an Open Access monograph experiment:
measuring citations and tweets five years later –
Scientometrics, 2016
• DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2160-6

11. DETECT USAGE PATTERNS WITH SNA
Current research:
Finding clusters of users with social
network analysis tools. OA = no user
registration.
Clusters based on book language (non-
English), or subjects such as immigration,
film & media or Southeast Asia. User
countries are sometimes relevant: non-
English books, Southeast Asia.
Tool: NodeXL

12. CLUSTER BOOKS USING NGRAMS AND SNA
Current research, in cooperation with
PhD student Curtin University: Alkim
Ozaygen
Automatically group books based on full
text. Possible goals: benchmarks,
keyword extraction.
Combining ngrams and social network
analysis: clusters. First results are
promising!

13. LOTS TO EXPLORE, WILL YOU JOIN ME?
Contact:
r.snijder@oapen.org
twitter.com/ronaldsnijder
orcid.org/0000-0001-9260-4941

14. REFERENCES
1. Ferwerda, E., Snijder, R., & Adema, J. (2013). OAPEN-NL - A project exploring
Open Access monograph publishing in the Netherlands, Final Report, The Hague.
Retrieved from http://oapen.org/download?type=export&export=oapen-nl-
final-report
2. Collins, E., & Milloy, C. (2016). OAPEN-UK final report: A five-year study into open
access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences. Retrieved from
http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/files/2016/01/OAPEN-UK-final-report-single-
page-view.pdf
3. Snijder, R. (2010). The profits of free books: An experiment to measure the impact
of open access publishing. Learned Publishing, 23(4), 293–301.
http://doi.org/10.1087/20100403