Reconsidering the gold open access citation advantage postulate in a multidisciplinary context: an analysis of the subject categories in the Web of Science database 2009-2014

Abstract

Since Lawrence in 2001 proposed the open access (OA) citation advantage, the potential benefit of OA has been discussed in depth. However, conclusions are not entirely consistent among fields. In this study, a longitudinal and multidisciplinary analysis of the gold OA citation advantage is developed. All research articles in all journals for all subject categories in the Web of Science database are considered (1,137,634 articles - 86,712 OA articles (7.6%) and 1,050,922 non-OA articles (92.4%) - published in 2009). At journal level, we also study the evolution of journal impact factors in those disciplines whose OA prevalence is higher. As the main conclusion, there is no generalizable gold OA citation advantage, neither at article nor at journal level.