The citation impact of Open Access agricultural research. A comparison between OA and non‐OA publications
| Pages | 772-785 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521011084618 |
| Date | 28 September 2010 |
| Published date | 28 September 2010 |
| Author | Kayvan Kousha,Mahshid Abdoli |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The citation impact of Open
Access agricultural research
A comparison between OA and non-OA
publications
Kayvan Kousha
Department of Library and Information Science,
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, and
Mahshid Abdoli
National Library and Archive of Iran, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Purpose – The main purpose of this study is to assess the citation advantage for self-archived Open
Access (OA) agriculture research against its non-OA counterparts.
Design/methodology/approach – At the article level, the paper compared the citation counts of
self-archived research with non-OA articles based upon a sample of 400 research articles from
ISI-indexed (ISI, Institute for Scientific Information) agriculture journals in 2005. At the journal level the
paper compared impact factors (IFs) of OA against non-OA agriculture journals from 2005 to 2007 as
reported by the ISI Journal Citation Reports. The paper also sought evidence of citation impact based on
a random sample of 100 OA and 100 non-OA publications from the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations in 2005. It used both ISI andScopus databases for citation counting and also
Google and Google Scholar for locating the self-archived articles published in the non-OA journals.
Findings – The results showed that there is an obvious citation advantage for self-archived
agriculture articles as compared to non-OA articles. Out of a random sample of 400 articles published
in non-OA agriculture journals, about 14 per cent were OA and had a median citation count of four
whereas the median for non-OA articles was two. However, at the journal level the average IF for OA
agriculture journals from 2005 to 2007 was 0.29, considerably lower than the average IF for non-OA
journals (0.65). Finally it found that FAO publications which were freely accessible online tended
to attract more citations than non-OA publications in the same year and had a mean citation count of
1.73 whereas the mean for non-OA publications was 0.28.
Originality/value – Self-archived agriculture research articles tended to attract higher citations than
their non-OA counterparts. This knowledge of the citation impact of OA agricultural research gives a
better understanding about the potential effect of self-archiving on the citation impact.
Keywords Open systems, Electronicpublishing, Archiving, Research,Agricultural
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The web has introduced new opportunities for academic publishing online that can
also be used to access research results. Open Access (OA) publishing (e.g. OA journals,
preprints, postprints and digital repositories) has rapidly turned into a global platform
for dissemination of scientific literature. A survey conducted in 1995 discovered only
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier
drafts of this paper. They also thank the Leverhulme Trust for funding this research and the
Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group for hosting a visit to the University of Wolverhampton.
OIR
34,5
772
Refereed article received
27 September 2009
Approved for publication
24 January 2010
Online Information Review
Vol. 34 No. 5, 2010
pp. 772-785
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684521011084618
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