OA Articles Research Articles

Sustainability of open access citation advantage: the case of Elsevier’s author-pays hybrid open access journals

The present study tended to investigate the sustainability of citation advantage of author-pays hybrid open access journals. Applying a comparative citation analysis method, it explored a sample consisted of 160,168 articles in 47 Elsevier APC-funded hybrid open access journals published in the periods 2007–2011 and 2012–2015. Two citation windows were selected in the study: one ranging from the journals’ publication years until 2013 (obtained from Sotudeh et al. in Scientometrics 104(2):581–608, 2015), and another ranging from the journals’ publication years until 2016 (data collection date in the present study). The comparative citation analysis of the older articles (published in 2007–2011) in the two mentioned citation windows indicated that they sustained their citation advantage in comparison with the toll-access ones. The citation advantage was also confirmed for more recent APC-funded OA articles (published in 2012–2015). Therefore, the passage of time did not seem to affect the citation gap between APC-funded OA and toll-access articles, and the citation advantage of the APC-funded OA articles was apparently a sustainable phenomenon. Moreover, the number of the APC-funded OA articles increased in comparison with that of the toll-gated articles. In addition, the APC-funded OA articles exhibited citation advantages in almost all fields.

Open access increases citations of papers in ecology

AbstractOpen access (OA) can effectively increase the accessibility and visibility of scientific articles and thus potentially confer them with citation advantages. Such an impact may be more pronounced in developing countries where the cost for journal subscription is comparably expensive and usually unaffordable. By comparing one OA article with one non‐OA article published in the same issue, we tested the impact of OA on citation advantages of articles published in 46 ecology journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). We compared OA to non‐OA articles published in the same issue of these journals, thereby controlling for potentially confounding effects of publication requirement and period. OA articles received significantly more citations than non‐OA articles, and this citation advantage of approximately one citation per year was sustained across publication years from 2009 to 2013. The OA citation advantage did not depend upon income of the country of origin of the citing scientists, and the OA citation advantage was found for citing scientists from North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, but not for Latin America. A total of 10 countries contributed more than 1000 citations each, and the OA citation advantage was found in all the 10 countries except Canada. Therefore, in ecology journals OA confers articles with citation advantages and such an impact accumulates with years and independent of the economic status of the countries. This information may guide decisions of scientific societies, journals, and individual authors as they weigh the relative costs and benefits of open electronic accessibility of scientific research.

The impact of open access on the medical literature: a review of current literature

Background: the aim of the article is to conduct an overview of the impact of OA on the medical articles based on 3-part categorization.Methods: Data were identified by a search strategy with eight combinations of keywords (open access, citation impact, citation advantage, citation count, article download, article usage, social media attention, altmetrics) and searched in three different databases.Results: the analysis was conducted on 107 studies dealing with citations, downloads and social impact. Sixty-seven of them simply employed the counting citations to OA and non-OA articles; nineteen articles compared the downloads and citations counts; and twenty-one articles investigated the social impact of OA articles. Twenty-five articles investigated the citations, download counts, and social impact of medical articles.Conclusions: The studies investigating the citation impact mostly showed citation advantages. Those that employed citation and download counts of medical articles using randomized controlled trials showed that OA articles were downloaded significantly more frequently, but found no evidence of a citation advantage for open access articles. The citation advantage from open access might be caused by other factors. Results of the studies comparing the social media attention and citations/downloads of the medical articles are often diametrically opposed.

The impact of open access on the medical literature: a review of current literature

Background : the aim of the article is to conduct an overview of the impact of OA on the medical articles based on 3-part categorization. Methods : Data were identified by a search strategy with eight combinations of keywords (open access, citation impact, citation advantage, citation count, article download, article usage, social media attention, altmetrics) and searched in three different databases. Results : the analysis was conducted on 107 studies dealing with citations, downloads and social impact. Sixty-seven of them simply employed the counting citations to OA and non-OA articles; nineteen articles compared the downloads and citations counts; and twenty-one articles investigated the social impact of OA articles. Twenty-five articles investigated the citations, download counts, and social impact of medical articles. Conclusions : The studies investigating the citation impact mostly showed citation advantages. Those that employed citation and download counts of medical articles using randomized controlled trials showed that OA articles were downloaded significantly more frequently, but found no evidence of a citation advantage for open access articles. The citation advantage from open access might be caused by other factors. Results of the studies comparing the social media attention and citations/downloads of the medical articles are often diametrically opposed.

Article processing charges for open access publication-the situation for research intensive universities in the USA and Canada.

Background. Open access (OA) publishing via article processing charges (APCs) is growing as an alternative to subscription publishing. The Pay It Forward (PIF) Project is exploring the feasibility of transitioning from paying subscriptions to funding APCs for faculty at research intensive universities. Estimating of the cost of APCs for the journals authors at research intensive universities tend to publish is essential for the PIF project and similar initiatives. This paper presents our research into this question.Methods. We identified APC prices for publications by authors at the 4 research intensive United States (US) and Canadian universities involved in the study. We also obtained APC payment records from several Western European universities and funding agencies. Both data sets were merged with Web of Science (WoS) metadata. We calculated the average APCs for articles and proceedings in 13 discipline categories published by researchers at research intensive universities. We also identified 41 journals published by traditionally subscription publishers which have recently converted to APC funded OA and recorded the APCs they charge.Results. We identified 7,629 payment records from the 4 European APC payment databases and 14,356 OA articles authored by PIF partner university faculty for which we had listed APC prices. APCs for full OA journals published by PIF authors averaged 1,775 USD; full OA journal APCs paid by Western European funders averaged 1,865 USD; hybrid APCs paid by Western European funders averaged 2,887 USD. The APC for converted journals published by major subscription publishers averaged 1,825 USD. APC funded OA is concentrated in the life and basic sciences. APCs funded articles in the social sciences and humanities are often multidisciplinary and published in journals such as PLOS ONE that largely publish in the life sciences.Conclusions. Full OA journal APCs average a little under 2,000 USD while hybrid articles average about 3,000 USD for publications by researchers at research intensive universities. There is a lack of information on discipline differences in APCs due to the concentration of APC funded publications in a few fields and the multidisciplinary nature of research.

A “librarian‐LIS faculty” divide in open access practice

PurposeThis paper seeks to examine a librarian‐faculty divide in authors' OA contributions with regard to article self‐archiving and OA consumptions with regard to citation counts.Design/methodology/approachThis paper measures the OA availabilities and citations of scholarly articles from 20 top‐ranked LIS journals published in 2006. A logistic regression analysis is taken to make the comparisons.FindingsIt finds that there is no correlation between the numbers of OA articles and the professional status of the authors. However, librarian authors differ from faculty authors in the citation and self‐citation rates of their articles. There are also differences between these two groups of authors in co‐authorship and the numbers of article pages and references.Originality/valueThis study takes a new approach to compare the publications of librarians and faculty in library and information science for their open access availability and citations. The findings may help OA advocates and administrators to make appropriate policy changes.

The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access: An Update

The research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles open access (OA, i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). About 10% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers’ employers and funders, as they are now increasingly beginning to do.

The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access: An Update

The research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles open access (OA, i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). About 10% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers’ employers and funders, as they are now increasingly beginning to do.

Open Access Increases Citation Rate

Open Access Increases Citation Rate

The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

The research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles Open Access (OA; i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). Only 5% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers' employers and funders, as the United Kingdom and the United States have recently recommended, and universities need to implement that mandate.

The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

The research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles Open Access (OA; i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). Only 5% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers' employers and funders, as the United Kingdom and the United States have recently recommended, and universities need to implement that mandate.