prediction: exponential increase in citations to open access articles

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

Prediction:  exponential increase in citations to open access articles

For the consideration of liblicense readers, I would like to submit a
prediction that there will be an exponential increase in citations to open
access articles:  slow increase at first, followed by a dramatic rise -
likely with bumps - rising to a peak.

My reasoning behind this prediction is basically that citations that
readers can click through directly to fulltext via a URL are of more value
to the reader than bibliographic-only citations, with retrieval being a
separate process.

Authors will tend to prefer clickable links, which are of course
accessible to the greatest possible readership with open access articles.  
I believe we are already seeing this trend - for example, in liblicense
messages over the past few years.  Personally, I prefer to both read and
cite articles that are clickable linkable.  When an author cites an
article in a journal that my local library cannot afford to purchase, I
feel left out of the conversation.  Please note:  I am not referring to my
current employer - I have only recently joined the staff of a large
academic university library, and am more familiar with the small to medium
academic environment.

What is beginning to emerge as a preference may at some point become an
expectation.  Individual perceptions may tend to shift from the clickable
link as a nice extra positive to the non-clickable link as a negative.
This may form one of the means of peer pressure that liblicense
participants have mentioned would be necessary to drive a system requiring
voluntary change.  That it, I can see people asking authors at some point
in time, "Is there a clickable link for that article?" and even "Why isn't
there a clickable link- grrr!"

Editors, at some point, will tend to see articles with clickable citations
as more valuable to readers, and will tend to select these over articles
with less accessible citations.  Editors and peer reviewers alike may
begin asking, "Is there a clickable link for that?"

One of the reasons there will be some bumps along the way is that
crossreferencing within subscription databases performs basically the same
function - but only among the community of subscribers.  If not every
library can afford all the big deals, this system will only work partially
even within the community of common subscribers - even for those with the
largest collections, the open access article will still be the surest way
to provide the article for the most possible readers.

Of course, there would be no way to measure this prediction at the present
time.  It might be interesting to have a look at some numbers around 2011
or so...but I'll leave that to the citation analysis experts.

Many thanks to Joseph Esposito for inspiring this train of thought...

My personal opinion by,

Heather Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
heatherm@eln.bc.ca
604-268-7001
Fax:  604-291-3023
WAC Bennett Library
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6