The Post-Embargo Open Access Citation Advantage: It Exists (Probably), Its Modest (Usually), and the Rich Get Richer (of Course)

Many studies show that open access (OA) articles-articles from scholarly journals made freely available to readers without requiring subscription fees-are downloaded, and presumably read, more often than closed access/subscription-only articles. Assertions that OA articles are also cited more often...

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Veröffentlicht in:PloS one 2016-08, Vol.11 (8), p.e0159614-e0159614
1. Verfasser: Ottaviani, Jim
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Many studies show that open access (OA) articles-articles from scholarly journals made freely available to readers without requiring subscription fees-are downloaded, and presumably read, more often than closed access/subscription-only articles. Assertions that OA articles are also cited more often generate more controversy. Confounding factors (authors may self-select only the best articles to make OA; absence of an appropriate control group of non-OA articles with which to compare citation figures; conflation of pre-publication vs. published/publisher versions of articles, etc.) make demonstrating a real citation difference difficult. This study addresses those factors and shows that an open access citation advantage as high as 19% exists, even when articles are embargoed during some or all of their prime citation years. Not surprisingly, better (defined as above median) articles gain more when made OA.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0159614