Re: Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?

["Gerry Mckiernan" <gerrymck@iastate.edu>]

Bernie and List/

Steve Hitchcock at U of Southampton (UK) has prepared an excellent
bibliography on "The Effect of Open Access and Downloads ('hits') on
Citation Impact:"

"Despite significant growth in the number of research papers available
through open access, principally through author self-archiving in
institutional archives, it is estimated that only c. 20% of the number of
papers published annually are open access. It is up to the authors of
papers to change this. Why might open access be of benefit to authors? One
universally important factor for all authors is impact, typically measured
by the number of times a paper is cited. Studies have begun to show that
open access increases impact, although more studies and more substantial
investigations are needed to confirm the effect.

This chronological bibliography is intended to describe progress in
reporting these studies; it also lists the Web tools available to measure
impact. It is a focused bibliography, on the relationship between impact
and access. It does not attempt to cover citation impact, or other related
topics such as open access, more generally, although some key papers in
these areas are listed as starting points for wider study."

 [ http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html ]

Thanks, Steve!

Gerry McKiernan
Science and Technology Librarian and Bibliographer
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck@iastate.edu 

c: Steve Hitchcock

>>> bernies@uillinois.edu 9/28/2004 12:52:53 AM >>>

Some of you may be interested in an article in the new issue of College
and Research Libraries:

Antelman, Kristen. Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?
College and Research Libraries, 65(5), 372-382.

Abstract:

Although many authors believe that their work has a greater research
impact if it is freely available, studies to demonstrate that impact are
few. This study looks at articles in four disciplines at varying stages of
adoption of open access-philosophy, political science, electrical and
electronic engineering and mathematics-to see whether they have a greater
impact as measured by citations in the ISI Web of Science database when
their authors make them freely available on the Internet. The finding is
that, across all four disciplines, freely available articles do have a
greater research impact. Shedding light on this category of open access
reveals that scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access
practices and being rewarded for it.

Bernie Sloan
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu