Open access (OA) or free online articles get read more often, but do not get cited frequently in academic literature, according to a new Cornell study.
The findings of the study, published online in the British Medical Journal, are particularly relevant to academic researchers, because the frequency with which a researcher's work is cited can impact tenure and promotion decisions. The study will be published in the journal's print edition dated August 9.
The researchers conducted what is claimed to be the first controlled study of OA publishing. Some journal articles were randomly made freely available while others were kept available by subscription only. This was to determine whether increased access to journal articles results in more article downloads and citations.
The researchers randomly assigned 247 articles in 11 scientific journals, to free access. They measured how many times these articles were downloaded, the number of unique visitors to each article and how many times each article was cited. It was found that in the year after the articles were published, OA articles were downloaded more but were no more likely to be cited than subscription-based articles.
