Re: Increased citation of OA

From: Philip Davis <pmd8_at_CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 09:12:39 -0400

We've been conducting a randomized controlled trial of open access
publishing with 7 publishers in the multidisciplinary sciences, biology,
medicine, social sciences, and humanities since January 2007.

The type of methodology we're using (randomized controlled trial) is key
here since previous observational studies simply assume that
author-sponsored OA articles are qualitatively similar to subscription-based
articles.

Preliminary results from 11 journals published by the American Physiological
Society indicate an increase in article downloads, although many of these
downloads are attributable to indexing robots. The articles are currently
between 11 and 14 months old and we see no citation advantage. In fact, the
randomly selected OA articles received slightly fewer citations, although
this result is non-significant.

We conclude that the 'citation advantage' so widely promoted in the
literature is an artifact of other explanatory variables.

Our paper is currently in review and should be made public shortly.

Philip Davis
PhD student
Cornell University, Dept. of Communication
Received on Tue Apr 01 2008 - 16:26:10 BST