Abstract: OBJECTIVE. Articles published in print journals with limited circulation are cited less frequently than those printed in journals with larger circulations. Open access (OA) has shown to improve citation rates in the fields of physics, mathematics and astronomy. The impact of OA on smaller biomedical journals has not been studied. We assessed the influence of OA on citations rates for a small, multi-disciplinary journal which adopted OA without article submission or article access fee. DESIGN. The full text of articles published since 1990 were made available online in 2001. Citations for these articles as retrieved using Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar were divided into two groups - the pre-OA period (1990-2000) and the post-OA period (2001-2004). Citations for the articles published between 1990 through 1999 during these two periods were compared using unpaired t test or Mann-Whitney test. RESULTS. Of the 553 articles published between 1990 through 1999, 327 articles received 893 citations between 1990 and 2004 (Table). The 4-year, post-OA period accounted for 549 (61.5%) of these citations, and 164 articles (50.1%) received their first citations only after OA was provided in 2001. For every volume studied (1990 through 1999), the maximum number of citations per year was received after 2001. None of the articles published during 1990-99 received any citation in the year of publication. In contrast, articles published in 2002, 2003 and 2004 received 3, 7 and 22 citations respectively in the year of publication itself. CONCLUSIONS. Open access was associated with increase in the number of citations received by the articles. It also decreased the lag time between publication and the first citation. For smaller biomedical journals, OA could be one of the means for improving visibility and thus citation rates.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/01/2005 10:10:00 AM.
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.
