PT151 S2 Q13 ExplanationWhen scientific journals began to offer

Answer choices, explained

1. A

   No Impact3% picked this

   A few of the most authoritative scientific journals were among the first to offer full online

   This does nothing to help us explain why there became greater similarity in terms of which articles were being cited by scientists. Which journals were the first / second / third / etc. doesn't have any common sense connection to citing the same articles.

   3%
2. B

   No Impact0% picked this

   Scientists who wrote a lot of articles were the most enthusiastic about accessing

   This does nothing to help us explain why there became greater similarity in terms of which articles were being cited by scientists. If the scientists who were most enthusiastic about this new access were those that wrote a lot of articles themselves, does that explain why scientists are increasingly citing the same articles? No, if anything, it sounds like these frequently-published scientists would cite their own work more and more. This answer doesn't give us a mechanism that explains why lots of scientists are citing the same articles as each other.

   0%
3. C

   No Distinction11% picked this

   Scientists are more likely to cite articles by scientists that they know than they are to cite articles by scientists they have never met,

   This plays off a distinction between who they know vs. who they don't. Does the advent of online access to journals change anything in relation to that? It doesn't seem to. Whether you have online access to your buddies' articles or just print access, you're still mainly citing your buddies' articles. Nothing about the new online access changes this answer, so this answer can't explain the change that occurred when the new online access started. It doesn't give us a mental distinction between "how scientists would have chosen what to cite" before online access vs. how they choose after online access.

   11%
4. D

   Unclear Impact1% picked this

   Several new scientific journals appeared at roughly the same time that full online access to

   This gives us a contemporaneous change, so it does provide a distinction. BEFORE online access — these new scientific journals didn't exist AFTER online access — they did Does that distinction help explain the greater tendency for scientists to be citing the same articles as each other? Not really, unless we assumed that the scientific community was all reading these new journals and picking the same articles to cite. Ultimately, we might come down to (D) and (E) and have to ask ourselves, "Which has a stronger common sense connection to scientists increasingly citing the same articles: several new journals appeared, or, easier to access most highly regarded articles?"

   1%
5. E

   Correct84% picked this

   Online searching made it easier for scientists to identify the articles that present the most highly regarded views on an issue,

   Why this is right

   "Online searching made it easier" is the causal difference-maker language we're looking for, since we want to understand how the advent of online access changed anything about how scientists cite articles. Since online searching made it easier to find the most highly regarded articles, it made it easier to cite those articles. If we add in some common sense that scientists would want to cite the most highly regarded views on an issue, then this gives us a mechanism by which to explain how online access led to more frequent citations of the same articles.

   Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   84%