Multiple open access availability and citation impact
Journal of Information Science
Analysis on open access citation advantage: an empirical study based on Oxford open journals
Proceedings of the 2011 iConference
Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
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Four subjectsecology, applied mathematics, sociology, andeconomicswere selected to assess whether there is a citationadvantage between journal articles that have an open-access (OA)version on the Internet compared to those articles that areexclusively toll access (TA). Citations were counted using the Webof Science, and the OA status of articles was determined bysearching OAIster, OpenDOAR, Google, and Google Scholar. Of asample of 4,633 articles examined, 2,280 (49%) were OA and had amean citation count of 9.04 whereas the mean for TA articles was5.76. There appears to be a clear citation advantage for thosearticles that are OA as opposed to those that are TA. Thisadvantage, however, varies between disciplines, with sociologyhaving the highest citation advantage, but the lowest number of OAarticles, from the sample taken, and ecology having the highestindividual citation count for OA articles, but the smallestcitation advantage. Tests of correlation or association between OAstatus and a number of variables were generally found to weak orinconsistent. The cause of this citation advantage has not beendetermined. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.