Points for Open Access, Science Magazine, May 19, 2006. (Thanks to Jennifer Heffelfinger.) A short unsigned news story. Excerpt:
Advocates of open-access publishing got new fuel for their argument
from a study published online this week in the open-access Public
Library of Science (PLoS) Biology suggesting that free papers get
cited more often. The analysis, conducted by Gunther Eysenbach of the Centre for Global
eHealth Innovation in Toronto, Canada, looked at articles published
from June to December 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, after the journal started letting authors pay $1000 to
make their papers immediately available for free. By April 2005, 78 (37%) of the 212 open-access articles had not been
cited versus 627 (49%) of the 1280 regular articles, which are free
online after 6 months. By October, 11 open-access articles (5%) were
still uncited compared to 172 (14%) of regular articles. After data
adjustments for factors such as authors' previous citation rates, the
open-access papers were twice as likely to be cited by April and
three times as likely by October. They also averaged more citations:
6.4 per paper versus 4.5.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/27/2006 09:48:00 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.
