The Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact

Another interesting article from an IEEE source -- "Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact," by Chawki Hajjem, Stevan Harnad, and Yves Gingras. Summary -- In 2001, Lawrence found that articles in computer science that were openly accessible (OA) on the Web were cited substantially more than those that were not. We have since replicated this effect in physics. To further test its cross-disciplinary generality, we used 1,307,038 articles published across 12 years (1992-2003) in 10 disciplines (Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Health, Political Science, Economics, Education, Law, Business, Management).... Comparing OA and NOA articles in the same journal/year, OA articles have consistently more citations, the advantage varying from 25%-250% by discipline and year.