title: The Post-Embargo Open Access Citation Advantage: It Exists (Probably), Its Modest (Usually), and the Rich Get Richer (of Course).
abstract: Many studies show that open access (OA) articles-articles from scholarly journals made freely available to readers without requiring subscription fees-are downloaded, and presumably read, more often than closed access/subscription-only articles. Assertions that OA articles are also cited more often generate more controversy. Confounding factors (authors may self-select only the best articles to make OA; absence of an appropriate control group of non-OA articles with which to compare citation figures; conflation of pre-publication vs. published/publisher versions of articles, etc.) make demonstrating a real citation difference difficult. This study addresses those factors and shows that an open access citation advantage as high as 19% exists, even when articles are embargoed during some or all of their prime citation years. Not surprisingly, better (defined as above median) articles gain more when made OA.
authors.affiliation: Michigan Publishing, University Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7293-9576
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ottaviani
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D066295:Open Access Publishing / Q000941:ethics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*