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Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact.
BMC Med. 2012; 10:73
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10 Jan 2013
General Interest, New Finding
DOI: 10.3410/f.717968610.793468321
This encouraging study suggests that studies published in open access (OA) journals are not marred by a lack of scientific rigour any more than studies published in subscription-based journals.
With the release of the 'Finch Report' in June {1}, it is becoming increasingly clear that the dissemination...Continue reading
With the release of the 'Finch Report' in June {1}, it is becoming increasingly clear that the dissemination...Continue reading
This encouraging study suggests that studies published in open access (OA) journals are not marred by a lack of scientific rigour any more than studies published in subscription-based journals.
With the release of the 'Finch Report' in June {1}, it is becoming increasingly clear that the dissemination of scientific information is on the verge of a paradigm shift. While scientists, publishers and policy makers debate the pros and cons of funding policies that enforce publication in open access (OA) journals, change is already upon us: over the past decade, the share of articles published OA has steadily increased, and biomedicine in particular has seen a 16-fold increase {2}. The OA journal PLoS ONE is now the largest journal by volume, accounting for an astonishing one article for every 60 indexed in Pubmed in 2011 {3}.
Among the concerns with OA is a loss of scientific quality and rigour. Indeed, opponents of OA argue that the article processing charge model of OA impinges on scientific quality in various ways. To this end, Bjork and Solomon have conducted a comparison of scientific impact between those studies published in traditional subscription journals and those published in open access journals, with further stratification of those OA journals that charge article processing fees and those that do not. The authors found that subscription-based articles tended to be cited more often, although these differences disappeared after correcting for factors such as scientific discipline, age of the journal, and the publisher's country of origin. As the authors acknowledge, there are obvious limitations to this study (e.g. access to material, which is, by definition, restrictive in subscription journals), and the obvious difficulty in associating scientific quality and impact with number of citations. These results are nevertheless encouraging since they suggest, despite the study's limitations, that studies published in OA journals are not marred by a lack of scientific rigour any more than studies published in subscription-based journals. Moreover, the growing number of citations for studies in OA journals suggests researchers are becoming increasingly aware of this.
With the release of the 'Finch Report' in June {1}, it is becoming increasingly clear that the dissemination of scientific information is on the verge of a paradigm shift. While scientists, publishers and policy makers debate the pros and cons of funding policies that enforce publication in open access (OA) journals, change is already upon us: over the past decade, the share of articles published OA has steadily increased, and biomedicine in particular has seen a 16-fold increase {2}. The OA journal PLoS ONE is now the largest journal by volume, accounting for an astonishing one article for every 60 indexed in Pubmed in 2011 {3}.
Among the concerns with OA is a loss of scientific quality and rigour. Indeed, opponents of OA argue that the article processing charge model of OA impinges on scientific quality in various ways. To this end, Bjork and Solomon have conducted a comparison of scientific impact between those studies published in traditional subscription journals and those published in open access journals, with further stratification of those OA journals that charge article processing fees and those that do not. The authors found that subscription-based articles tended to be cited more often, although these differences disappeared after correcting for factors such as scientific discipline, age of the journal, and the publisher's country of origin. As the authors acknowledge, there are obvious limitations to this study (e.g. access to material, which is, by definition, restrictive in subscription journals), and the obvious difficulty in associating scientific quality and impact with number of citations. These results are nevertheless encouraging since they suggest, despite the study's limitations, that studies published in OA journals are not marred by a lack of scientific rigour any more than studies published in subscription-based journals. Moreover, the growing number of citations for studies in OA journals suggests researchers are becoming increasingly aware of this.
References
1.
Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications.
Finch Report (Accessed 10 January 2013)
2.
Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and internal structure.
BMC Med 2012; 10:124
PMID: 23088823
DOI: 10.1186/1741-7015-10-124
3.
PLoS ONE: Five Years, Many Milestones.
Blog entry (Accessed 09 January 2013)
Disclosures
None declared
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Davidge S and Bourque S: F1000Prime Recommendation of [Björk BC and Solomon D, BMC Med 2012, 10:73]. In F1000Prime, 10 Jan 2013; DOI: 10.3410/f.717968610.793468321. F1000Prime.com/717968610#eval793468321
F1000Prime Recommendations, Dissents and Comments for [Björk BC and Solomon D, BMC Med 2012, 10:73]. In F1000Prime, 22 May 2013; F1000Prime.com/717968610
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BACKGROUND: In the past few years there has been an ongoing debate as to whether the proliferation of open access (OA) publishing would damage the peer review system and put the quality of scientific journal publishing at risk. Our aim was to inform this debate by comparing the scientific impact of OA journals with subscription journals, controlling for journal age, the country of the publisher, discipline and (for OA publishers) their business model.
METHODS: The 2-year impact factors (the average number of citations to the articles in a journal) were used as a proxy for scientific impact. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) was used to identify OA journals as well as their business model. Journal age and discipline were obtained from the Ulrich's periodicals directory. Comparisons were performed on the journal level as well as on the article level where the results were weighted by the number of articles published in a journal. A total of 610 OA journals were compared with 7,609 subscription journals using Web of Science citation data while an overlapping set of 1,327 OA journals were compared with 11,124 subscription journals using Scopus data.
RESULTS: Overall, average citation rates, both unweighted and weighted for the number of articles per journal, were about 30% higher for subscription journals. However, after controlling for discipline (medicine and health versus other), age of the journal (three time periods) and the location of the publisher (four largest publishing countries versus other countries) the differences largely disappeared in most subcategories except for journals that had been launched prior to 1996. OA journals that fund publishing with article processing charges (APCs) are on average cited more than other OA journals. In medicine and health, OA journals founded in the last 10 years are receiving about as many citations as subscription journals launched during the same period.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that OA journals indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus are approaching the same scientific impact and quality as subscription journals, particularly in biomedicine and for journals funded by article processing charges.
PMID: 22805105
