The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research

Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research
Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research
Articles whose authors make them Open Access (OA) by self-archiving them online are cited significantly more than articles accessible only to subscribers. Some have suggested that this "OA Advantage" may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. To test this we compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving for a sample of 27,197 articles published 2002-2006 in 1,984 journals. The OA Advantage proved just as high for both. Logistic regression showed that the advantage is independent of other correlates of citations (article age; journal impact factor; number of co-authors, references or pages; field; article type; country or institution) and greatest for the most highly cited articles. The OA Advantage is real, independent and causal, but skewed. Its size is indeed correlated with quality, just as citations themselves are (the top 20% of articles receive about 80% of all citations). The advantage is greater for the more citeable articles, not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. [See accompanying RTF file for responses to feedback. Four PDF files provide Supplementary Analysis.]
open access, research impact, citation impact, logistic regression, self-archiving, open access mandates
1932-6203
e13636-[5pp]
Gargouri, Yassine
303854c8-2efd-4002-b775-92682b4ffdb2
Hajjem, Chawki
4bf0a8ac-941b-4573-bc97-8748e1356bc3
Lariviere, Vincent
a86c0d28-ac49-4bf1-bc20-57549e821273
Gingras, Yves
403ebefd-91d1-4e2b-89cc-be8fe4aaf591
Brody, Tim
153aca10-d72f-41d8-b704-684067e78cf0
Carr, Les
0572b10e-039d-46c6-bf05-57cce71d3936
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
Gargouri, Yassine
303854c8-2efd-4002-b775-92682b4ffdb2
Hajjem, Chawki
4bf0a8ac-941b-4573-bc97-8748e1356bc3
Lariviere, Vincent
a86c0d28-ac49-4bf1-bc20-57549e821273
Gingras, Yves
403ebefd-91d1-4e2b-89cc-be8fe4aaf591
Brody, Tim
153aca10-d72f-41d8-b704-684067e78cf0
Carr, Les
0572b10e-039d-46c6-bf05-57cce71d3936
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b

Gargouri, Yassine, Hajjem, Chawki, Lariviere, Vincent, Gingras, Yves, Brody, Tim, Carr, Les and Harnad, Stevan (2010) Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research. PLoS ONE, 5 (10), e13636-[5pp]. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013636).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Articles whose authors make them Open Access (OA) by self-archiving them online are cited significantly more than articles accessible only to subscribers. Some have suggested that this "OA Advantage" may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. To test this we compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving for a sample of 27,197 articles published 2002-2006 in 1,984 journals. The OA Advantage proved just as high for both. Logistic regression showed that the advantage is independent of other correlates of citations (article age; journal impact factor; number of co-authors, references or pages; field; article type; country or institution) and greatest for the most highly cited articles. The OA Advantage is real, independent and causal, but skewed. Its size is indeed correlated with quality, just as citations themselves are (the top 20% of articles receive about 80% of all citations). The advantage is greater for the more citeable articles, not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. [See accompanying RTF file for responses to feedback. Four PDF files provide Supplementary Analysis.]

Text
davisreplong.rtf - Other
Available under License Other.
Download (19kB)
Text
Supp1_CERNmSOTON.pdf - Other
Available under License Other.
Download (84kB)
Text
Supp2_CitesPL1.pdf - Other
Available under License Other.
Download (55kB)
Text
Supp3_CiteRanges.pdf - Other
Available under License Other.
Download (57kB)
Text
Supp4_IndivCites.pdf - Other
Available under License Other.
Download (77kB)
Text
MandateOA_PLOSpostprint.pdf - Accepted Manuscript
Available under License Other.
Download (1MB)

Show all 6 downloads.

More information

Published date: 18 October 2010
Keywords: open access, research impact, citation impact, logistic regression, self-archiving, open access mandates
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 268493
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/268493
ISSN: 1932-6203
PURE UUID: 2b8a3502-b9e9-4685-91ca-36c6d0a61a86
ORCID for Les Carr: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2113-9680
ORCID for Stevan Harnad: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6153-1129

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 10 Feb 2010 11:35
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:48

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Yassine Gargouri
Author: Chawki Hajjem
Author: Vincent Lariviere
Author: Yves Gingras
Author: Tim Brody
Author: Les Carr ORCID iD
Author: Stevan Harnad ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×