Narayana S. Murali and six co-authors, Impact of FUTON and NAA Bias on Visibility of Research, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 79, 8 (2004) pp. 1001-1006. From the abstract: 'A comprehensive search identified 324 cardiology, nephrology, and rheumatology/immunology journals on-line until May 2003. The status of these journals was ascertained in MEDLINE as having FUTON [full text on the net], abstracts only, and NAA (no abstract available). Impact factors for all available journals from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) were abstracted....FUTON bias is the tendency to peruse what is more readily available. This is the first study to show that on-line availability of medical literature may increase the impact factor and that such increase tends to be greater in FUTON journals. Failure to consider this bias may affect a journal’s impact factor. Also, it could limit consideration of medical literature by ignoring relevant NAA articles and thereby influence medical education akin to publication or language bias.' (Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.)
(PS: The Murali study shows that online access (free or priced) increases impact. But if online access to priced articles has this effect, then online access to free articles should have it a fortiori.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/29/2005 12:07:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
