While the number of times a scientific article is cited by other articles is currently the gold standard for ranking its impact, online publishing offers another measure: the number of unique downloads. A recent analysis in the online Journal of Vision (JOV) finds that downloads are a good predictor of citations - and they are available significantly faster.
The analysis was published in an editorial by JOV Editor-in-Chief Andrew Watson (http://journalofvision.org/9/4/i/). The journal recently began publishing download counts for every published article. It also ranks the top 20 articles by download. Watson reports an overall correlation of 0.74 between downloads and citations for individual articles in JOV.
JOV is the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology's (ARVO) online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted to all aspects of visual function in humans and other organisms. It is published exclusively in digital form. Full-text articles may be accessed for free via the Internet at www.journalofvision.org.
