OA citation impact study: No conclusions possible

[Stevan Harnad]

    Tonta, Yasar and Ünal, Yurdagül and Al, Umut (2007) The Research
    Impact of Open Access Journal Articles. In Proceedings ELPUB 2007,
    the 11th International Conference on Electronic Publishing, focusing
    on challenges for the digital spectrum, pp. 1-11, Vienna (Austria).
    http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00009619/

This article compared average citation counts in several different
fields for a sample of articles in a sample of OA journals in the
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) .

The average citation counts for articles in the OA journals were found
to vary across fields. It was concluded that OA research impact varies
across fields.

No comparison was made with non-OA journals in the same fields. Hence it
is impossible to say whether any of these differences have anything to
do with OA. Fields no doubt differ in their average number of citations.
Journals no doubt differ too. And it is not clear whether the OA
journals in each field are the top, medium or bottom journals, relative
to the non-OA journals.

No conclusions at all can be drawn from this study. 

Stevan Harnad