Free Academic Articles Get Read But Don't Generate More Citations

Science Daily

When academic articles are "open access" or free online, they get read more often, but they don't -- going against conventional wisdom -- get cited more often in academic literature, finds a new Cornell study.

The reason, suggest Cornell graduate student Philip Davis and colleagues, including three Cornell professors, is that most researchers probably already have all the access they need to relevant articles.

"It appears that higher quality articles -- in other words, more citable articles -- are simply made freely available," said Davis. "Previous studies using different methods simply got cause and effect reversed." The study is published online in the British Medical Journal and will be published in the print edition Aug. 9.

The findings are particularly relevant to academic researchers, because the frequency with which a researcher's work is cited can be a factor in tenure and promotion decisions.

The researchers conducted the first controlled study of open-access publishing, randomly making some journal articles freely available while keeping others available by subscription only, to determine whether increased access to journal articles results in more article downloads and citations.