Source-linked AI summary
The Open Access Advantage Considering Citation, Article Usage and Social Media Attention
Xianwen Wang, Chen Liu, Wenli Mao, Zhichao Fang
TL;DR
The study examines how open-access status affects citations, article usage, and social-media attention, including how usage evolves over time. It compares OA and non-OA articles in Nature Communications using citation, usage, and altmetrics data, finding broader and more sustained attention for OA articles.
Problem
The study asks whether the citation advantage of open-access articles extends to article views and social-media discussion, and how OA and non-OA usage evolves over time.
Method
The study compares OA and non-OA Nature Communications articles using citation, article-level usage, and social-media metrics from the same online-only journal.
Results
OA articles show advantages in citations, article usage, and social-media attention, with sustained and steady usage growth over longer periods while non-OA attention is concentrated early after publication.
Takeaways & Limitations
The OA advantage extends beyond citation to article usage and persists longer than the short period of attention observed for non-OA papers.
Takeaways & Limitations
Page-view data cover only usage on the nature.com journal platform and exclude third-party services and possible self-archived copies.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
In this study, we compare the difference in the impact between open access (OA) and non-open access (non-OA) articles. 1761 Nature Communications articles published from 1 Jan. 2012 to 31 Aug. 2013 are selected as our research objects, including 587 OA articles and 1174 non-OA articles. Citation data and daily updated article-level metrics data are harvested directly from the platform of nature.com. Data is analyzed from the static versus temporal-dynamic perspectives. The OA citation advantage is confirmed, and the OA advantage is also applicable when extending the comparing from citation to article views and social media attention. More important, we find that OA papers not only have the great advantage of total downloads, but also have the feature of keeping sustained and steady downloads for a long time. For article downloads, non-OA papers only have a short period of attention, when the advantage of OA papers exists for a much longer time.
Introduction
Research on the open access advantage has expanded beyond citations as article-level usage metrics and Altmetrics become increasingly available. This study examines whether OA advantages extend to article views and social media attention, including their temporal evolution.
- Open access advantage research has primarily compared citation impact between OA and non-OA articles.
- Article usage metrics and Altmetrics provide additional article-level measures beyond citation data.Publishers increasingly provide usage statistics, including daily page views on nature.com.
- The study asks whether OA advantages extend to article views and social media discussion.It also examines how article usage evolves over time for OA and non-OA articles.
Data and Method
The study uses Nature Communications as a same-journal test bed with comparable OA and non-OA articles and daily article-level metrics. It analyzes citation, online attention, and page-view data, including accumulated page views over time.
- Nature Communications enables comparison of OA and non-OA articles within the same online-only journal.Before becoming fully open access, it contained substantial numbers of both OA and non-OA papers.
- Nature Communications article metrics include citation data, online attention data, and article page views.The page-view data are updated daily rather than restricted to total article views.
- 1761 articles published from 1 Jan. 2012 to 31 Aug. 2013 were analyzed, including 587 OA and 1174 non-OA articles.Daily updated metrics were collected and processed in a SQL database.
- Figure 2 compares accumulated page views for individual OA and non-OA articles using colored lines and group averages.Most OA lines are higher than non-OA lines, as are the corresponding average lines.
Results
Static comparisons show an OA advantage across article views, citations, and social media attention, with the largest difference appearing in page views.
- Citation, article views, and social media discussion were the three indicators used for static OA–non-OA comparisons, with articles grouped by four-month publication intervals.The groups enabled comparisons between OA and non-OA articles published in the same periods.
- 2.5 to 3.6 times: OA articles had this page-view advantage over corresponding non-OA groups across five publication periods.For January–April 2012, OA articles averaged 10073.27 page views, about 4.4 times the corresponding non-OA group.
- 77.17%: OA article citedness exceeded the 68.82% citedness reported for non-OA articles.453 of 587 OA articles had at least one citation.
- 1.09 versus 0.98 average citations: OA and non-OA articles were nearly equal in the shortest publication-history group.For the January–April 2013 group, the OA-to-non-OA citation ratio rose to 1.24.
- 1.27 to 1.48: OA articles had this social-media attention ratio relative to non-OA articles across all publication groups.OA articles averaged 2.8 to 3.4 Twitter and Facebook interactions and attracted slightly more attention.
Dynamic comparison
Temporal analysis shows that the OA page-view advantage widens over publication history because OA articles continue gaining views steadily while non-OA attention largely fades after the first month.
- The gap between OA and non-OA accumulated page views widens as publication history becomes longer.The curves fluctuate more at the tail because few articles have been published for over 600 days.
- Days 0–30 formed the first dynamic segment, days 31–600 the middle segment, and days 601–776 the final segment.This segmentation was designed to compare the dynamic evolution of daily downloads.
- During the first month, newly published papers attracted researchers’ most attention, and both accumulated-view curves rose quickly.The first 30 days corresponded to the initial period after a new issue became available.
- 7.87 versus 1.74: the trend-line slope for accumulated page views was much steeper for OA than non-OA articles during days 31–600.The steeper OA slope indicates sustained and steady growth, whereas non-OA accumulated views were nearly flat after the initial period.
- After rapid first-30-day growth, non-OA articles received few new views during the following long period.By contrast, the OA curve continued a noticeably upward trajectory during days 31–600.
Conclusion and discussion
The study confirms an OA advantage across citations, article usage, and social media attention. This advantage grows over time because OA articles sustain steady attention, whereas non-OA attention is concentrated soon after publication.
- OA articles receive more citations, article views, and social media attention than non-OA articles.
- OA articles’ accumulated advantage increases greatly as publication time lengthens.
- OA articles attract sustained and steady attention long after publication.
- Most non-OA article attention occurs during the first 30 days, after which new downloads become rare.
Limitation
The study’s evidence has limitations involving dynamic usage patterns, altmetrics interpretation, and incomplete coverage of article views. These constraints affect how broadly its results can be interpreted.
- The study may not fully reflect download dynamics because its research sample is relatively small.
- Altmetrics can support rapid evaluation, but evaluating articles with altmetrics alone may be misleading.
- The page-view data cover only Nature.com usage and exclude third-party services such as personal websites or self-archived platforms.