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Will Open Access publishing lead to more citations?

There is no clear answer to this question. Initial surveys showed a clear tendency of an increase in the number of citations. However, later studies draw a more nuanced picture, where the results – due to more stringent methods of analysis – seem less unequivocal. Still, an analysis from 2008 carried out by Philip M. Davies et al. shows that Open Access publishing leads to a higher number of unique visitors and full-text downloads. Thus, Open Access publishing entails that the publications reach a wider audience, although this does not necessarily result in a higher number of citations. On the basis of this, we may assume that the wider readership is primarily to be found outside the traditional research environments – e.g. among employees in private enterprises, researchers from outside the established research environments and from developing countries, general practitioners, lawyers, upper secondary school teachers, politicians, journalists, etc.

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last modified March 04, 2013