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. 2016 Aug 22;11(8):e0159614.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159614. eCollection 2016.

The Post-Embargo Open Access Citation Advantage: It Exists (Probably), Its Modest (Usually), and the Rich Get Richer (of Course)

Jim Ottaviani  1
Affiliations

The Post-Embargo Open Access Citation Advantage: It Exists (Probably), Its Modest (Usually), and the Rich Get Richer (of Course)

Jim Ottaviani. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Many studies show that open access (OA) articles-articles from scholarly journals made freely available to readers without requiring subscription fees-are downloaded, and presumably read, more often than closed access/subscription-only articles. Assertions that OA articles are also cited more often generate more controversy. Confounding factors (authors may self-select only the best articles to make OA; absence of an appropriate control group of non-OA articles with which to compare citation figures; conflation of pre-publication vs. published/publisher versions of articles, etc.) make demonstrating a real citation difference difficult. This study addresses those factors and shows that an open access citation advantage as high as 19% exists, even when articles are embargoed during some or all of their prime citation years. Not surprisingly, better (defined as above median) articles gain more when made OA.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Oo—E for means.
(a) overall (b) detail.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Oo—E for medians.
(a) overall (b) detail.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Oo—E for equivalents.
(a) overall (b) detail.
Fig 4
Fig 4. U-M citation curve, 1975–2013.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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