Open Access Publishing in Randomized Controlled Trial

["October Ivins" <october.ivins@mindspring.com>]

Phil Davis and several colleagues at Cornell have conducted a 
rigorous randomized controlled trial of articles in the 11 
journals of the American Physiological Society to study how open 
access affects article downloads and citations.  The key findings 
are that while downloads increased, citations did not within the 
first year following publication. The article is available in the 
current issue of the BMJ. 
<http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/jul31_1/a568>

Kent Anderson, writing in SSP's Scholarly Kitchen blog (Open 
Access Doesn't Drive Citations), comments on the results and the 
research design.  He includes reactions to the increased traffic 
from Marty Frank at the APS. Kent concludes his remarks by 
calling for additional research applying "this superior study 
design to other domains to confirm or refute the findings". 
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/

I found both the blog and the article very worthwhile reading and 
recommend them to LibLicense readers.

October Ivins

(Ms.) October Ivins, MLS
Ivins eContent Solutions
phone (781)793-9283 EST
october.ivins@mindspring.com