This document discusses open access publishing and citation metrics. It argues that open access articles have more readers and citations than articles behind paywalls, citing research showing an open access citation advantage of 25-250%. It provides an overview of citation indexes and metrics like the h-index and g-index. The document recommends that scholars publish in open access journals or repositories when possible to enlarge their audience and impact. Overall it promotes the benefits of open access for both readers and scholars.

1. Open Access Publishing: More
Readers, More Impact
A. Ben Wagner, Sciences Librarian
University at Buffalo
WNY/Ontario ACRL Fall Conf. - Nov. 5, 2010
(or…Why scholars should care about open
access and how to communicate that)

2. Do citation metrics really matter?
Used to be Publish or Perish.
Now it’s increasingly Get Cited or Perish.
More departments tracking citation counts for
individuals and subgroups in dept.
Many more requests for citation metrics from
faculty & even grad students
Used increasingly in tenure, promotion, &
funding allocations by departments, institutions,
and even entire countries
Rapidly moving beyond physical sciences

3. New NRC Report
A Data-Based Assessment of Research-
Doctorate Programs in the United States.
Dept. by Dept. Ranking partially based on
faculty publication metrics 2000-2006
using Web of Science citation data
http://www.nap.edu/rdp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Nat

4. Do
Metrics
Really
Matter?
Nature,
16 June
2010.
465, p.
860-862

5. The OA Message to Researchers
Open Access: more readers, more
citations, more impact
It’s your work; retain a few rights, at least
posting a manuscript to repository.
Sure you publish for prestige, but you also
publish to be read!

6. 2007
All scholarly
articles in
journals covered
by SSCI
238 Cites
2007 Impact = 238 2007 cites = 1.506
Factor 158 2005-06 articles
2005-2006
Child Abuse &
Neglect (journal)
158 articles
The Classic Journal Impact Factor

7. So what?
JIF is a measure of extreme currency – 2
year window.
JIF is a GROSS average. Average article
in Nano Letters cited 10.371 times,
But the citation RANGE = 0 - 319 times
(14 articles cited zero times!).
Never ever intended to measure quality of
an individual article or author, even
Thomson Scientific says that.

8. A Better Citation Metric
h-Index (Hirsch Index)
An h-Index of 11 means a person (or
dept.) has 11 articles cited at least 11
times.
Easily calculated from Web of Science
http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/w

9. Critique of h-index
Rewards longevity, but not least-
publishable-unit or sheer quantity.
Recent and old work rewarded equally
Does not reward highly cited papers
Many variants (g-index, m-index, etc.
proposed to weight age, recent work, &
highly cited papers, # of coauthors)
Relatively insensitive to manipulation.

10. Variants of h-index
g-index = g number of papers that
received (collectively) g2
citations [Rewards
highly cited papers]
m-index = h-index / no. of years a
researcher has published [normalizes for
longevity]

11. Citation Indexes – Many more players – 1
SciFinder
NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Google Scholar/Harzing’s POP
Amazon (Search inside this book)
Scitation/Spin Web/PROLA
Citation Bridge (US Patents)
USPTO
Optics InfoBase

12. Citation Indexes – Many more players - 2
CiteSeer (primarily computer & info sci)
ScienceDirect
PsycInfo
IEEE Xplore
Spires (High Energy Physics)
IOP Journals
CrossRef

13. My Take
For an individual or department:
h-index plus
Total cites to all published articles plus
 Citation Report graphs from appropriate the
citation databases (SCI, SSCI, AHCI,+?)
Give a pretty good take on the impact of
one’s journal articles within the limits of
available citation data.
Demonstrably superior to JIF

14. A Free, New Citation Tool
Harzing’s Publish or Perish
Install from:
http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm
Automatically analyzes citations from
Google Scholar for any author.
Instructive to compare Web of Science
citation report with Harzing’s report.
Warning: Dirty data, don’t take at face
value.

15. Harzing’s POP Statistics
Total number of papers & citations
Ave. number of citations per paper & per author
Ave. number of papers per author & per year
Hirsch's h-index and related parameters
Egghe's g-index
Other variations on the h-index
Age-weighted citation rate
Number of authors per paper

16. Primer on Open Access (OA)
OA simply means free-to-read.
OA is fully compatible with rigorous peer
review.
OA does not necessarily mean author-pay
(there are many models being tested).
OA journals can be low or high quality,
just like subscription journals.

17. Can OA have Prestige?
PLOS Biology
JIF=12.916 (8th
out of 283 biochem journals)
Started in October 2003
PLOS One (in 2010 will be the largest
science journal in the world) – est. 8,000
articles
JIF= 4.351 (10th
out of 76 gen. biology journals)

18. OA – a flash in the pan?
Directory of Open Access Journals
(DOAJ)
www.doaj.org
More than 5,553 fully OA, peer reviewed
journals
2 new titles per day
2,361 journals containing 461,954 articles are
searchable at article level.

19. OA – a flash in the pan? NOT!
1,500 OA repositories - new repository
every day.
Scientific Commons – 38 million OA
items. http://www.scientificcommons.org/
20% medical lit avail. Free within 2 years
(Heather Morrison)
Over 120 OA publication mandates

20. SO WHAT!
We publish for prestige, but we also
publish to be read & cited.
What if I point you to actual research that shows
OA articles are cited 25-250% more than toll
access (TA) articles?
Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated
Bibliography – A. Ben Wagner, Issues in Science &
Technology Librarianship, Winter 2010.
http://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html

21. A Couple of OA Cite Advantage Studies
(OA-CA = citations to OA vs. TA articles)
44% OA-CA in Ecology
(Norris & Rowland, 2008) The citation advantage of
open-access articles. JASIST, 59(12), 1963-1972.
OA-CA: Math (91%); Elec. Engineering
(51%); Philosophy (45%)
(Antelman 2004) Do open-access articles have a
greater research impact? College & Research
Libraries. 65(5): p. 372-382.

22. What scholars should know about
OA
Know what your OA options are.
www.doaj.org
OA journal not the whole story
Most non-OA journals allow authors to
deposit their articles in an IR/DR.
See http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ for
publisher policies.

23. Remember Institutional Repositories
You have rights! Retain right to mount
your hard work to an IR/DR.
Done right it will be visible to Google
Scholar, OAIster, & other OAI harvestors.
Wide variety of formats & document types
It’s all about discovery. More avenues the
better.

24. The OA Advantage
As scholar, enlarge your audience/impact.
As reader, enjoy free online access to the
literature.
As teacher, your students have free,
liability-free access (fair use, course pack).
For all of us, moving away from an
unsustainable journal publishing system.

25. Two Stories
Journal of Chemical Information and
Modeling Article (how I came out on top
because of open access)
Reviewer Hell (the system is really, truly,
profoundly broken)

26. Check out:
Open the channels of communication in your
field.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/OpenAccess.pdf
Create Change (SPARC)
http://www.createchange.org/
Making Change Work for You
Practical steps as faculty, researcher, reviewer,
editor, society member, teacher.
 http://www.createchange.org/change/index.shtml

27. From Opportunity Assessment Instrument
 ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit:
http://www.acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/
 “10 Things You Should Know About Scholarly Communication”
http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/scholcomm/docs/SC
%20101%2010%20Things%20You.pdf.
 “Open Access Overview” (Peter Suber):
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
 Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook: Practical Steps for
Implementing Open Access: http://www.openoasis.org/
 “Transforming Scholarly Communication and Publishing” (UB
Libraries – for faculty and students):
http://library.buffalo.edu/scholarly/index.php.
 6 Things Researchers Need to Know about OA – P. Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-06.htm