Open access citation advantage (OACA), sometimes known as FUTON bias (for "full text on the net"), is a type of bias whereby scholars tend to cite academic journals with open access (OA)—that is, journals that make their full text available on the Internet without charge (not behind a paywall)—in preference to toll-access publications. The concept was introduced, under the FUTON bias name, by UK medical researcher Reinhard Wentz in a letter to The Lancet in 2002.[1]

Scholars in some fields can more easily discover and access articles whose full text is available online, which increases authors' likelihood of reading and citing these articles, an issue that was first raised and has been mainly studied in connection with medical research.[2][3][4][5] In the context of evidence-based medicine, articles in expensive journals that do not provide open access may be "priced out of evidence", giving a greater weight to open access publications.[6] Open access citation advantage may increase the impact factor of open access journals relative to journals without open access.[1][7]

One study concluded that authors in medical fields "concentrate on research published in journals that are available as full text on the internet, and ignore relevant studies that are not available in full text, thus introducing an element of bias into their search result".[1] Authors of another study conclude that "the OA advantage is a quality advantage, rather than a quality bias", that authors make a "self-selection toward using and citing the more citable articles—once OA self-archiving has made them accessible", and that open access "itself will not make an unusable (hence uncitable) paper more used and cited".[8]

A similar phenomenon, termed the "no abstract available bias" or NAA bias, is a scholar's tendency to cite journal articles that have an abstract available online more readily than articles that do not—this affects articles' citation count similarly to open access citation advantage.[1][2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wentz, R. (2002). "Visibility of research: FUTON bias". The Lancet. 360 (9341): 1256. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11264-5. PMID 12401287. S2CID 5084231.
  2. ^ a b Murali, N. S.; Murali, H. R.; Auethavekiat, P.; Erwin, P. J.; Mandrekar, J. N.; Manek, N. J.; Ghosh, A. K. (2004). "Impact of FUTON and NAA bias on visibility of research". Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 79 (8): 1001–1006. doi:10.4065/79.8.1001. PMID 15301326. S2CID 20536645.
  3. ^ Ghosh, A. K.; Murali, N. S. (2003). "Online access to nephrology journals: The FUTON bias". Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation. 18 (9): 1943, author reply 1943. doi:10.1093/ndt/gfg247. PMID 12937253.
  4. ^ Mueller, P. S.; Murali, N. S.; Cha, S. S.; Erwin, P. J.; Ghosh, A. K. (2006). "The effect of online status on the impact factors of general internal medicine journals". The Netherlands Journal of Medicine. 64 (2): 39–44. PMID 16517987.
  5. ^ Krieger, M. M.; Richter, R. R.; Austin, T. M. (2008). "An exploratory analysis of PubMed's free full-text limit on citation retrieval for clinical questions". Journal of the Medical Library Association. 96 (4): 351–355. doi:10.3163/1536-5050.96.4.010. PMC 2568849. PMID 18974812.
  6. ^ Gilman, I. (2009). "Opening up the Evidence: Evidence-Based Practice and Open Access". Faculty Scholarship. Pacific University Libraries. Archived from the original on February 21, 2011. Retrieved July 5, 2011.
  7. ^ Clayson, Peter E.; Baldwin, Scott A.; Larson, Michael J. (June 1, 2021). "The open access advantage for studies of human electrophysiology: Impact on citations and Altmetrics". International Journal of Psychophysiology. 164: 103–111. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2021.03.006. ISSN 0167-8760. PMID 33774077. S2CID 232409668.
  8. ^ Gargouri, Y.; Hajjem, C.; Larivière, V.; Gingras, Y.; Carr, L.; Brody, T.; Harnad, S. (2010). "Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research". PLoS ONE. 5 (10): e13636. arXiv:1001.0361. Bibcode:2010PLoSO...513636G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013636. PMC 2956678. PMID 20976155.

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