The soaring prices of scholarly and scientific journals have forced academic libraries used only by academic research...

AnkitM February 18, 2016

Not sure about this question

Hi, i was extremely confused with this question. Didn't understand how to reach the appropriate answer choice. Can you please break down the stimulus and the correct answer? Thank you in advance!

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Flavio March 1, 2016

I'm not sure whether to choose B.

Mehran March 2, 2016

Hi @AnkitM, @Flavio, thanks for your questions.

Let's start by analyzing the stimulus. The "suggestion" mentioned can be thought of as a conclusion: "in each academic discipline subscription decisions should be determined solely by a journal's usefulness in that discipline, measured by the frequency with which it is cited in published writings by researchers in the discipline."

The question stem asks us to weaken this argument.

Answer choice (D) does just that. If researchers are not citing influential journal articles out of concern that the journal is not itself highly regarded, then the frequency of citations is NOT an accurate measure of usefulness to the discipline.

Answer choice (B) is entirely irrelevant to the claim we are trying to weaken--that is, that there is some link between usefulness and citation frequency.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Flavio March 2, 2016

Thanks @mehran. I initially thought it was D but switched to B, thinking D was the trap answer. But now it's clear.