Patrick Gaulé (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

Program

• Date: 01.07.2008
  Time: 11:30 - 13:00
  Location: Room 211b, Ludwigstr. 28/VG

The impact of open access of scientific articles

We are interested in the impact of open access of scientific articles (=free availability of full-text versions over the web) on their diffusion and in particular the number of citations received. Our sample consists of around 4500 articles published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, an important, high-volume scientific journal that offers to their authors the possibility to buy immediate open access for their articles for a USD 1000 fee. Our analysis is a comparison between the citation rates of articles in open access versus those that are not.

Previous studies have found that open access articles receive a higher number of citations. We find a similar result using a more extensive sets of controls, including a new independent measure article quality. However, we show using an instrumental variable approach that the higher citation rates of open access articles is due to self-selection of higher quality articles into open access rather than a diffusion effect of open access itself.