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The citation advantage of open‐access articles

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  • Michael Norris
  • Charles Oppenheim
  • Fytton Rowland

Abstract

Four subjects—ecology, applied mathematics, sociology, and economics—were selected to assess whether there is a citation advantage between journal articles that have an open‐access (OA) version on the Internet compared to those articles that are exclusively toll access (TA). Citations were counted using the Web of Science, and the OA status of articles was determined by searching OAIster, OpenDOAR, Google, and Google Scholar. Of a sample of 4,633 articles examined, 2,280 (49%) were OA and had a mean citation count of 9.04 whereas the mean for TA articles was 5.76. There appears to be a clear citation advantage for those articles that are OA as opposed to those that are TA. This advantage, however, varies between disciplines, with sociology having the highest citation advantage, but the lowest number of OA articles, from the sample taken, and ecology having the highest individual citation count for OA articles, but the smallest citation advantage. Tests of correlation or association between OA status and a number of variables were generally found to weak or inconsistent. The cause of this citation advantage has not been determined.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Norris & Charles Oppenheim & Fytton Rowland, 2008. "The citation advantage of open‐access articles," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(12), pages 1963-1972, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:59:y:2008:i:12:p:1963-1972
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.20898
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    Cited by:

    1. Guangyao Zhang & Yuqi Wang & Weixi Xie & Han Du & Chunlin Jiang & Xianwen Wang, 2021. "The open access usage advantage: a temporal and spatial analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6187-6199, July.
    2. Liwei Zhang & Liang Ma, 2023. "Is open science a double-edged sword?: data sharing and the changing citation pattern of Chinese economics articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2803-2818, May.
    3. Carol Tenopir & Elizabeth Dalton & Allison Fish & Lisa Christian & Misty Jones & MacKenzie Smith, 2016. "What Motivates Authors of Scholarly Articles? The Importance of Journal Attributes and Potential Audience on Publication Choice," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-22, July.
    4. Mousumi Karmakar & Sumit Kumar Banshal & Vivek Kumar Singh, 2020. "Does presence of social media plugins in a journal website result in higher social media attention of its research publications?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2103-2143, September.
    5. Fernanda Morillo, 2020. "Is open access publication useful for all research fields? Presence of funding, collaboration and impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 689-716, October.
    6. Huyen Thanh T. Nguyen & Minh-Hoang Nguyen & Tam-Tri Le & Manh-Toan Ho & Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2021. "Open Access Publishing Probabilities Based on Gender and Authorship Structures in Vietnam," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-16, October.
    7. Salim Sazzed, 2021. "Association between the Rankings of Top Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics Journals and the Scholarly Reputations of Chief Editors," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-15, September.
    8. Sergio Copiello, 2019. "The open access citation premium may depend on the openness and inclusiveness of the indexing database, but the relationship is controversial because it is ambiguous where the open access boundary lie," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 995-1018, November.
    9. Wen-Yau Cathy Lin, 2021. "Effects of open access and articles-in-press mechanisms on publishing lag and first-citation speed: a case on energy and fuels journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 4841-4869, June.
    10. Bo-Christer Björk & Patrik Welling & Mikael Laakso & Peter Majlender & Turid Hedlund & Guðni Guðnason, 2010. "Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(6), pages 1-9, June.
    11. Abdelghani Maddi, 2021. "Game theory and scholarly publishing: premises for an agreement around open access," Papers 2106.13321, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.
    12. Sara M. González-Betancor & Pablo Dorta-González, 2019. "Publication modalities ‘article in press’ and ‘open access’ in relation to journal average citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1209-1223, September.
    13. Simon Spedding, 2016. "Open Access Publishing of Health Research: Does Open Access Publishing Facilitate the Translation of Research into Health Policy and Practice?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-9, January.
    14. Elías Sanz-Casado & Daniela Filippo & Rafael Aleixandre Benavent & Vidar Røeggen & Janne Pölönen, 2021. "Impact and visibility of Norwegian, Finnish and Spanish journals in the fields of humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 9031-9049, November.

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