Opening Up Communication: Assessing Open Access Practices in the Communication Studies Discipline

ISSN 2162-3309 | JLSC is published by the Pacific University Libraries | http://jlsc-pub.org Volume 5, General Issue (2017) Opening Up Communication: Assessing Open Access Practices in the Communication Studies Discipline Teresa Schultz Schultz, T. (2017). Opening Up Communication: Assessing Open Access Practices in the Communication Studies Discipline. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 5 (General Issue), eP2131. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2131 External Data or Supplements: Schultz, Teresa, (2017). Data from: Opening Up Communication: Assessing Open Access Practices in the Communication Studies Discipline. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XDUIPZ, Harvard Dataverse. © 2017 Schultz. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ISSN 2162-3309 10.7710/2162-3309.2131 RESEARCH Opening Up Communication: Assessing Open Access Practices in the Communication Studies Discipline Teresa Schultz Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of Nevada INTRODUCTION Open access (OA) citation effect studies have looked at a number of disciplines but not yet the field of communication studies. This study researched how communication studies fare with the open access citation effect, as well as whether researchers follow their journal deposit policies. METHODS The study tracked 920 articles published in 2011 and 2012 from 10 journals and then searched for citations and an OA version using the program Publish or Perish. Deposit policies of each of the journals were gathered from SHERPA/RoMEO and used to evaluate OA versions. RESULTS From the sample, 42 percent had OA versions available. Of those OA articles, 363 appeared to violate publisher deposit policies by depositing the version of record, but the study failed to identify post-print versions for 87 percent of the total sample for the journals that allowed it. All articles with an OA version had a median of 17 citations, compared to only nine citations for non-OA articles. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION The citation averages, which are statistically significant, show a positive correlation between OA and the number of citations. The study also shows communication studies researchers are taking part in open access but perhaps without the full understanding of their publisher’s policies. Received: 01/29/2016 Accepted: 04/25/2017 Correspondence: Teresa Schultz, Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center, 1664 N. Virginia Street MS 322, Reno, NV, © 2017 Schultz. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) jlsc-pub.org eP2131 | 1 JLSC Volume 5, General Issue IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE 1. This study shows that scholarly articles in communication studies enjoy a correlation between the availability of green OA versions and an increase in citation rates, similar to previous studies on OA citation effects, although it is still difficult to determine whether there is a causal relationship between the two. 2. The study also shows that communication studies researchers have a healthy participation in OA (although there is room for growth), as 42 percent of the articles in the study were made OA. 3. Despite an acceptance of OA by some in the communication studies field, many apparently lack a full understanding of or a disinterest in copyright and journal policies. Continuing to educate these researchers about the importance of these issues and how it affects them could improve their awareness, lead to better application of their rights as authors, and improve their rates of OA participation. INTRODUCTION Some library science scholars have theorized that one of the benefits of making articles open access (OA) is an increase in the number of times the scholarship, on average, is cited (Antelman, 2004). Doty (2013) coined the term “OA citation effect” to describe the relationship between access and citations. Open access advocates find this measure valuable as it may show the greater impact that OA articles have over other scholarly articles that remain behind a toll-access (TA) gateway. To support this theory, a number of studies have compared the intra-journal citation rates for published articles made OA via deposit into a repository with the citation rates for articles that remain behind a paywall. The initial focus on access and citation in the literature was on the natural sciences, where OA has seen much buy-in, but more recent findings show that differences in the citation rate might depend on the discipline or field of an article (Antelman, 2004; Hajjem, Harnad, & Gingras, 2005; Norris, Oppenheim, & Rowland, 2008). Several studies have branched out from the natural sciences into various social science fields (Antelman, 2004; Norris, Oppenheim, & Rowland, ., 2008; Atchison & Bull, 2015), but so far none have examined citation rates for OA articles in the discipline of communication studies, which encompasses a broad range of subdisciplines, including communication theory, health communication, mass media, interpersonal communication, political communication, and performance studies (National Communication Association, 2015). The National Communication Association defines the discipline as studying “how people use messages to generate meanings within and across various contexts, cultures, channels, and media,” (2015, para. 1). In researching the OA citation effect on communication studies, this study will seek to answer the following questions: 2 | eP2131 Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication Schultz | Opening Up Communication 1. Do OA communication studies articles have higher citation rates than TA articles from the same journal? 2. What is the difference, if any, between citation rates for OA and TA communication articles? 3. Are authors or depositors following publisher guidelines for making articles available openly? LITERATURE REVIEW OA Effect and the Social Sciences A number of studies have investigated citations of green OA articles, which is when a work has been deposited in an open repository or website (Suber, 2015), with many of them finding a positive correlation (SPARC Europe, 2016). Although most initial research studies into the open access citation effect (OACE) looked at the sciences (Metcalfe, 2006; Moed, 2006; Eysenbach, 2006; Henneken et al., 2006; Davis & Fromerth, 2006), a number have since looked at the OACE on various social science disciplines. Antelman, in one of the first OACE studies, looked specifically at citation rates in both the sciences and social sciences: mathematics, electrical and electronic engineering, political science, and philosophy (2004). Antelman studied 2,017 articles from the four fields and found that OA articles in each of the four disciplines did see higher citation rates than TA articles in the same fields but that the rates differed, ranging from as low as a 45 percen (...truncated)