Open Access Archivangelism

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Update Jan 1, 2010: See Gargouri, Y; C Hajjem, V Larivière, Y Gingras, L Carr,T Brody & S Harnad (2010) “Open Access, Whether Self-Selected or Mandated, Increases Citation Impact, Especially for Higher Quality Research”
Update Feb 8, 2010: See also "Open Access: Self-Selected, Mandated & Random; Answers & Questions"

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Tonta, Yaşar 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).

The above 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, in subject matter, quality, and citation impact, hence must be equated: 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. The authors are encouraged to do the necessary controls.

Note also that Hajjem et al. 2005 (and others) report that the ratio of OA/non-OA articles is positively correlated with citation counts. This can mean that higher-quality articles are more likely to be made OA (Quality Bias), or that the OA impact advantage is greater for higher-quality articles (Quality Advantage) -- or, most likely, both (Hajjem & Harnad 2006).

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) pp. 39-47.

Hajjem, C. and Harnad, S. (2006) The Open Access Impact Advantage: Quality Advantage or Quality Bias? Technical Report, ECS, University of Southampton.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum