Re: Open Access Citation Impact Advantage: weight of the evidence

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

Phil Davis' recent comment to my post, "The Open Access Citation 
Impact Advantage: weight of the evidence" misses the central 
point: the weight of the evidence support an open access citation 
impact advantage.

As A. Ben Wagner points out, there are: 39 articles showing an 
open access citation impact advantage, in comparison with 7 
articles either showing no effect or ascribing the citation 
impact effect to factors unrelated to OA publication.
ohttp://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html

The list of studies showing an OA citation impact advantage 
include two of Phil Davis' own, Davis, P.M., (2009) (showing a 
17% citation impact advantage) and Davis & Fromerth (2007), 
showing a citation impact advantage.

A Davis study claiming no citation impact advantage (2008) has 
been widely critiqued as a premature conclusion. This study found 
a strong download advantage. Other citation impact advantage 
studies have found that an early citation impact advantage tends 
to correlate with a later citation impact advantage. This just 
makes sense; an author must download and read a work before they 
can cite it, and one must allow time for publication of citing 
articles.

best,

Heather Morrison, MLIS
Doctoral Candidate, SFU School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com