title: Open access and global participation in science.
abstract: Previous investigations into the impact of open-access journals on subsequent citations confounded open and electronic access and failed to track availability over time. With new data, we separated these effects. We demonstrate that a journal receives a modest increase in citations when it comes online freely, but the jump is larger when it first comes online through commercial sources. This effect reverses for poor countries where free-access articles are much more likely to be cited. Together, findings suggest that free Internet access widens the circle of those who read and make use of scientists' investigations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. jevans@uchicago.edu
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Reimer
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information; D015706:Bibliometrics; D003906:Developing Countries; D033181:Information Dissemination; D038622:Internationality; D020407:Internet; D010506:Periodicals as Topic