OA advantage = EA + (AA) + (QB) + QA + (CA) + UA

[Ian Rowlands]

Hi Stevan

Thanks, that's very helpful.

Ian

Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>:

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>    Pertinent Prior AmSci Topic Threads:
>
>    "Early Download Impact Predicts Later Citation Impact" (Sep 2004)
>    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3951.html
>
>    "OA advantage = EA + AA + QB + OA + UA" (Sep 2004)
>    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3978.html
>
> On Wed, 21 Jun 2006, Ian Rowlands wrote:
>
>> Several recent studies (e.g. Thomson Scientific, Eysenbach) have
>> indicated that open access articles are more likely to be cited sooner
>> than tolled access articles.  This is an argument that, on the face
>> of it, provides a powerful argument for open access: it speeds up
>> scientific workflow.  Can anyone supply a testable hypothesis for this?
>> I can quite easily understand how open access leads to MORE use, thus
>> higher citation.  But speedier citation?  What are the plausible cause
>> and effect arguments here?
>
> OA not only increases but accelerates citations for the following reasons:
>
>    (1) OA can start before publication, at the preprint stage. Preprints
>    can be self-archived, used, and cited even before they have reached
>    the article (postprint) stage.
>
>    (2) Both preprints and postprints can be cited by (subsequent)
>    preprints, and preprints can be updated many times, unlike a
>    published postprint, which is etched in stone (although the the
>    practice of posting a postpublication revision -- a post-postprint --
>    in increasing too).
>
>   (3) Brody et al. (2005) showed that the interval between first
>   posting of either preprints or postprints and the peak of curve for
>   first citations of them has been getting earlier and earlier across the
>   years as self-archiving has grown (in physics): papers are citing and
>   getting cited earlier and earlier in the research/publication cycle.
>
>   (4) This "Early Access" (EA) advantage is so great that some
>   (e.g. Kurtz 2004) have concluded that it may be the biggest factor
>   in the OA citation advantage (Harnad 2005).
>
>   (5) Before there can be citation, there has to be access (at least
>   in the case of serious scholarship). That means downloads precede
>   citations: They also correlate with citations later on. Downloads
>   can now happen earlier and earlier (Brody et al. 2005)
>
>   (6) For most papers, even in disciplines that do not self-archive
>   preprints, the self-archiving of a postprint means earlier and wider
>   accessibility to potential users than publishing alone does.
>
> Note, however, that there have been *many* more and earlier reports of
> the OA impact advantage (both in terms of increased citations/downloads
> and accelerated citations/downloads) than the two studies just mentioned
> by Rowlands, and that most of them are based on OA self-archiving rather
> than on OA publishing. See Steve Hitchcock's longstanding Bibliography
> of Findings on the OA Advantage (and the sample studies below):
>
>    http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
>
> Brody, T. and Harnad, S. (2004) Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA)
> vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals. D-Lib Magazine 10(6).
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10207/
>
> Brody, T., Harnad, S. and Carr, L. (2005) Earlier Web Usage Statistics
> as Predictors of Later Citation Impact. Journal of the American
> Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST).
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10713/
>
> Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Gingras, Y. (2005) Ten-Year
> Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it
> Increases Research Citation Impact. IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin 28(4)
> 39-47.
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11688/
>
> Harnad, S. (2005) OA Impact Advantage = EA + (AA) + (QB) + QA + (CA) + UA.
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12085/
>
> Kurtz, M. J., Eichhorn, G., Accomazzi, A., Grant, C. S., Demleitner,
> M., Murray, S. S. (2004) The Effect of Use and Access on Citations.
> Information Processing and Management, 41 (6): 1395-1402
> http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~kurtz/IPM-abstract.html
>
> Stevan Harnad
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>
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> please describe your policy at:
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>
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>    BOAI-1 ("green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal
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> OR
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>            a suitable one exists.
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> AND
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>            in your institutional repository.
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>



Dr Ian Rowlands
Director of Research, UCL Centre for Publishing
www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk