Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research

Background: Articles whose authors have supplemented subscription-based access to the publisher's version by self- archiving their own final draft to make it accessible free for all on the web (''Open Access'', OA) are cited significantly more than articles in the same journal and year that have not been made OA. Some have suggested that this ''OA Advantage'' may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. To test this we compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving for a sample of Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research Yassine Gargouri 0 Chawki Hajjem 0 Vincent Larivie` re 0 Yves Gingras 0 Les Carr 0 Tim Brody 0 Stevan 0 Robert P Futrelle, Northeastern University, United States of America 0 1 Institut des Sciences Cognitives, Universite du Que bec a` Montre al , Montre al, Que bec , Canada , 2 Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies, Universite du Que bec a` Montre al , Montre al, Que bec , Canada , 3 Canada Research Chair in the History and Sociology of Science, Universite du Que bec a` Montre al , Montre al, Que bec , Canada , 4 Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Sciences, Universite du Que bec a` Montre al , Montre al, Que bec , Canada , 5 School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton , Southampton , United Kingdom PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org - The 25,000 peer-reviewed journals and refereed conference proceedings that exist today publish about 2.5 million articles per year, across all disciplines, languages and nations. No university or research institution anywhere, not even the richest, can afford to subscribe to all or most of the journals that its researchers may need to use [1]. As a consequence, all articles are currently losing some portion of their potential research impact (usage and citations), because they are not accessible online to all their potential users [2]. This is supported by recent evidence, independently confirmed by many studies, to the effect that articles whose authors have supplemented subscription-based access to the publishers version by self-archiving their own final draft to make it accessible free for all on the web (Open Access, OA) are cited significantly more than articles in the same journal and year that have not been made OA. This OA Impact Advantage has been found in all fields analyzed so far physical, technological, biological and social sciences, and humanities [312] Hence OA is not just about public access rights or the general dissemination of knowledge: It is about increasing the impact and thereby the progress of research itself. A works research impact is an indication of how much it contributes to further research by other scientists and scholars how much it is used, applied and built upon [1317]. That is also why impact is valued, measured and rewarded in researcher performance assessement as well as in research funding [18]. Self-archiving mandates Only about 1520% of the 2.5 million articles published annually worldwide are being self-archived by their authors today [8,19]. Creating an Institutional Repository (IR) and encouraging faculty to self-archive their articles therein is a good first step, but that is not sufficient to raise the self-archiving rate appreciably above its current spontaneous self-selective baseline of 1520% [20]. Nor are mere requests or recommendations by researchers institutions or funders, encouraging them to self-archive, enough to raise this 20% figure appreciably, even when coupled with offers of help, rewards, incentives and even offers to do the deposit on the authors behalf [21]. In two international, multidisciplinary surveys, 95% of researchers reported that they would self-archive if (but only if) required to do so by their institutions or funders. (Eighty-one percent reported that, if it was required, they would deposit willingly; 14% said they would deposit reluctantly, and only 5% would not comply with the deposit requirement; [22].) Subsequent studies on actual mandate compliance have gone on to confirm that researchers do indeed do as they reported they would do, with mandated IRs generating deposit rates several times greater than the 20% self-selective baseline and well on the road toward 100% within about two years of adoption [20]. Universities own IRs are the natural locus for the direct deposit of their own research output: Universities (and research institutions) are the universal providers of all research output, in all scientific and scholarly disciplines; they accordingly have a direct interest in hosting, archiving, monitoring, measuring, managing, evaluating, and showcasing their own research output in their own IRs, as well as in maximizing its uptake, usage, and impact [23,24]. OA self-archiving mandates hence add visibility and value at both the individual and institutional level [25]. In 2002, The University of Southamptons School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) became the first in the world to adopt an official self-archiving mandate. Since then, a growing number of departments, faculties and institutions worldwide (including Harvard, Stanford, and MIT) as well as research funders (including all seven UK Research Funding Councils, the US National Institutes of Health, and the European Research Council) have likewise adopted OA self-archiving mandates. Over 160 mandates had already been adopted and registered and charted in the Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP) as of summer 2010. In 2008, mindful of the benefits of mandating OA, the council of the European Universities Association (EUA, consisting of more than 800 universities, in 46 countries) unanimously recommended that all European Universities should create IRs and should require all their research output to be deposited in them immediately upon publication (to be made OA as soon as possible thereafter). The EUA further recommended that these selfarchiving mandates be extended to all research results arising from EU research project funding. A similar recommendation was made by EURAB (European Research Advisory Board). In the US, the FRPAA has proposed similar mandates for all research funded by the major US research funding agencies. Some studies, however, have suggested that the OA Advantage might just be a self-selection bias rather than a causal factor, with authors selectively tending to make higher-quality (hence more citable) articles OA [2629]. The present study was carried out to test this hypothesis by comparing self-selected OA with mandated OA on the basis of the research article output of the four institutions with the longest-standing OA mandates: (i) Southampton University (School of Electronics & Computer Science) in the UK (since 2002); (ii) CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland (since November, 2003); (iii) Queensland Univers (...truncated)