Assembling the evidence…
Abstract The existence of an open access (OA) citation advantage—that is, whether OA increases citations—has been a topic of interest for many years. Although numerous studies have focused on whether OA increases citations, expectations for OA go beyond that. One such expectation is the promotion of knowledge transfer across various fields. This study aimed to clarify what effects OA, particularly gold OA, has on knowledge transfer across fields. Specifically, we measure the effect of OA on interdisciplinary and within-discipline citation counts by decomposing an existing OA citation advantage metric. OA increased both interdisciplinary and within-discipline citations in many fields studied, and only interdisciplinary citations in chemistry, computer science, and clinical medicine. In these three fields, clinical medicine showed a tendency toward interdisciplinary citations, independent of journal or paper. These findings suggest that OA fosters knowledge transfer across disciplines.
OA increased both interdisciplinary and within-discipline citations in many fields studied, and only interdisciplinary citations in chemistry, computer science, and clinical medicine.
causal wording applied to unadjusted observational citation ratios with residual selection and article-level confounding
These findings suggest that OA fosters knowledge transfer across disciplines.
interdisciplinary citation counts do not identify OA-caused knowledge transfer
The analysis revealed that OA fostered interdisciplinary citations in 13 out of the 18 natural science fields examined.
field-level associations are reported, but the observational comparison cannot establish that OA fostered them
clinical medicine OA papers were more frequently cited across different fields, not because they covered different topics than non-OA papers, but because OA has improved the availability of these papers.
topic similarity does not identify improved availability as the causal mechanism
A high IOACA in chemistry and computer science was largely driven by specific journals or highly-cited papers, whereas in clinical medicine it appears to be a characteristic of the entire field.
journal, quartile, and paper-level breakdowns directly show concentration in chemistry and computer science
Derived from the full evaluation — not a separate score.
Strengths
The paper separates aggregate OA citation advantage into IOACA and WOACA, allowing field-level citation differences to be distinguished by whether citing papers come from within or outside the field.
↳ Introduction, pp. 2966–2967; Methods, pp. 2968–2969
The analysis uses a large 2017 SCIE cohort, a six-year citation window, and DOAJ matching to avoid treating current OA status as evidence of original gold-OA publication.
↳ Methods, pp. 2967–2968
JIF-quartile and journal-level analyses show that chemistry and computer-science results are concentrated in particular journals or papers rather than presenting every positive field average as uniform.
↳ Figure 4; Tables 2–3; Results, pp. 2973–2975
Limitations
The headline analysis compares raw average citation ratios, while JIF quartiles provide only a coarse descriptive check. Selection into gold OA and article-, author-, journal-, and topic-level differences remain plausible explanations for the associations.
↳ Literature Review, p. 2965; Methods, pp. 2968–2969; Figure 4
The Abstract and Conclusion state that OA “increased” citations and “fostered” knowledge transfer, although the observational analysis does not identify an OA-caused effect.
↳ Abstract; Conclusion, pp. 2979–2980
The analysis covers one 2017 cohort of gold-OA, WoS-indexed natural-science papers using coarse, mutually exclusive ESI fields. Transfer to other databases, disciplines, years, and OA routes remains untested.
↳ Methods, pp. 2967–2968; Limitations, pp. 2979–2980
The IOACA/WOACA decomposition is a meaningful descriptive extension of OA citation-advantage research, supported by a large corpus and transparent metric definitions. Annual, JIF-quartile, and journal-level analyses add useful checks and reveal that some field-level results are concentrated in particular venues or papers. The central weakness is inferential: raw OA/non-OA citation ratios do not isolate OA from selection and other confounding processes. Because the Abstract and Conclusion nevertheless describe OA as increasing citations and fostering knowledge transfer, the paper requires major revision to align its claims and limitations with the observational evidence.
Nabu’s assessment, alongside the field’s view.
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Limited2.8
Confidence highThe IOACA/WOACA decomposition clearly extends aggregate OA citation-advantage analysis and is applied across 18 fields. Its advance is meaningful but descriptive, and the asserted accessibility mechanism is not identified by the design.
“We also decomposed the OACA to explore whether OA increases the number of interdisciplinary citations.”
The study uses a large, transparently constructed cohort, a six-year citation window, DOAJ cross-checking, annual comparisons, and JIF-quartile analyses. Raw OA/non-OA ratios nevertheless leave selection and article-level confounding uncontrolled, while the paper makes causal claims.
“The analysis revealed that OA fostered interdisciplinary citations in 13 out of the 18 natural science fields examined.”
The progression from research questions to metric definitions, field groups, and focused case studies is easy to follow. Precision falls at the headline level because “increased” and “fosters” imply causal effects not isolated by the analysis.
“These findings suggest that OA fosters knowledge transfer across disciplines.”
The paper positions IOACA against OA citation-advantage and citation-diversity research and discusses a complicating clinical-medicine finding. It identifies selection bias in the literature but does not trace residual confounding through the limitations or causal conclusion.
“the selection bias postulate states that papers authored by reputable authors or those of higher quality are more likely to be made OA”
Lower confidence on Contribution, Positioning — domain match limited.
Caveats4 of 4 checks
The reported descriptive results are internally consistent, but the causal wording of the central interpretation exceeds what the observational comparisons identify.
The paper identifies the proprietary bibliometric sources and analysis tools, declares no funding or competing interests, and involves no human-subject procedure requiring ethics approval.
Flags: 1 declared / 5 total
32 of 32 checkable references verified
36 references in manuscript 4 are books, websites or datasets — counted, but not index-checkable
No retraction notice found in Retraction Watch.
Sources: Retraction Watch ✓
Where this paper’s evidence sits on the path from initial observation to real-world use.
IOACA is operationalized on real-world publication and citation records, so the work goes beyond a conceptual proposal. It has not been tested as an intervention, implementation instrument, or decision-support product.
“IOACA is a citation count-based metric that measures the scholarly impact of OA”
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