Open access publishing, article downloads and citations at 3years

[Philip Davis]

Critics of our open access publishing experiment (read: Stevan Harnad) 
have expressed skepticism that we were too eager to report our findings 
and should have waited between 2 and 3 years.  All of the articles in 
our study have now aged 3-years and we report [1] that our initial 
findings [2] were robust: articles receiving the open access treatment 
received more article downloads but no more citations.

ARTICLE DOWNLOADS
During the first year of publication, open access articles received more 
than double the number of full-text downloads (119%, 95% C.I. 100% - 
140%) and 61% more PDF downloads (95% C.I. 48% - 74%) from a third more 
unique visitors (32%, 95% C.I. 24% - 41%). Abstract views were reduced 
by nearly a third (-29%, 95% C.I. -34% - -24%) signaling a reader 
preference for the full article when available.

ARTICLE CITATIONS
Thirty-six months after publication, open access treatment articles were 
cited no more frequently than articles in the control group (Figure 2). 
Open access articles received, on average, 10.6 citations (95% C.I. 9.2 
-12.0) compared to 10.7 (95% C.I. 9.6 - 11.8) for the control group. No 
significant citation differences were detected at 12, 18, 24 and 30 
months after publication.


1. Davis, P. M. 2010. Does Open Access Lead to Increased Readership and 
Citations? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Articles Published in APS 
Journals. The Physiologist 53: 197-201. 
http://www.the-aps.org/publications/tphys/2010html/December/open_access.htm

2. Davis, P. M., Lewenstein, B. V., Simon, D. H., Booth, J. G., & 
Connolly, M. J. L. 2008. Open access publishing, article downloads and 
citations: randomised trial. BMJ 337: a568. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a568


-- 
Philip M. Davis, Ph.D.
Department of Communication
301 Kennedy Hall
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
email: pmd8 at cornell.edu
phone: 607 255-2124
https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/~pmd8/resume
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/author/pmd8/