Early citation advantage?

[Frank Havemann]

Dear collegues,

the use of eprints can significantly accelerate the scientific communication.
This was demonstrated by me with a small sample of articles in theoretical
High Energy Physics published 1998 and 1999 in Physical Review D. Typically
the eprints in this sample are available eight months before the printed
issue is published. Three quarters of them are cited in eprints authored by
other researchers before the journal issue appears (among them all highly
cited eprints).

My results are until now only published in German. But the figures are in
English:
http://www.ib.hu-berlin.de/~fhavem/E-prints.pdf

Frank Havemann


***************************
Dr. Frank Havemann
Department of Library and Information Science
Humboldt University
Dorotheenstr. 26
D-10099 Berlin
Germany

tel.:  (0049) (030) 2093 4228
http://www.ib.hu-berlin.de/inf/havemann.html


Ian Rowlands:
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> 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?
>
> Ian Rowlands
> UCL Centre for Publishing
> www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk