Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads

[Phil Davis]

Dear Sigmetrics,
I am relatively new to this list, but in keeping with the spirit of sharing
new publications, I am including the following report just posted on the arXiv.
--Phil Davis


Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads for
mathematics articles?
Authors: Philip M. Davis, Michael J. Fromerth
Date: March 14, 2006
http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0603056

An analysis of 2,765 articles published in four math journals from
1997-2005 indicated that articles deposited in the arXiv received 35% more
citations on average than non-deposited articles (an advantage of about 1.1
citations per article), and this difference was most pronounced for
highly-cited articles. The most plausible explanation was not the Open
Access or Early View postulates, but Self-Selection, which has led to
higher quality articles being deposited in the arXiv. Yet in spite of their
citation advantage, arXiv-deposited articles received 23% fewer downloads
from the publisher's website (about 10 fewer downloads per article) in all
but the most recent two years after publication. The data suggest that
arXiv and the publisher's website may be fulfilling distinct functional
needs of the reader.