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Although many authors believe that their work has a greater research impact if it is freely available, studies to demonstrate that impact are few. This study looks at articles in four disciplines at varying stages of adoption of open access—philosophy, political science, electrical and electronic engineering and mathematics—to see whether they have a greater impact as measured by citations in the ISI Web of Science database when their authors make them freely available on the Internet. The finding is that, across all four disciplines, freely available articles do have a greater research impact. Shedding light on this category of open access reveals that scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access practices and being rewarded for it.
The finding is that, across all four disciplines, freely available articles do have a greater research impact.
causal-leaning impact wording exceeds an observational comparison with uncontrolled self-selection and uncertain exposure timing
The relative increase in citations for open-access articles ranged from a low of 45 percent in philosophy to 51 percent in electrical and electronic engineering, 86 percent in political science, and 91 percent in mathematics.
group means directly support the percentages, though independent-group significance testing and confounding remain concerns
the discipline with the lowest open-access rate (philosophy) also exhibited the most tenuous link between citation and open access (the 95% confidence interval includes both means)
the reported means and confidence-interval comparison support this qualified descriptive observation
scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access practices and being rewarded for it
the observational design cannot establish that posting caused the citation reward
Derived from the full evaluation — not a separate score.
Strengths
The study compares freely available and restricted articles within selected journals across philosophy, political science, electrical and electronic engineering, and mathematics. This broadens the early evidence beyond narrower disciplinary and journal-level studies.
↳ Introduction and Research Question, pp. 372–374; Table 1
The paper reports presampling, sample-size planning, journal selection, Google title searching, and citation exclusions. It also explains several mechanisms through which open articles could be missed.
↳ Methodology, Sample, and Data Collection, pp. 374–376
Librarians, repository initiatives, open-access publishing alternatives, and faculty rights negotiations are explicitly identified as users and contexts for the findings.
↳ Introduction, p. 374; Conclusions, p. 379
Limitations
Table 3 compares apparently independent open and non-open article groups, yet the Results report a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, which ordinarily requires paired observations. This could affect the p-values supporting the central cross-disciplinary significance claim.
↳ Results and Discussion, p. 376; Table 3
Authors choose whether to post articles, and author prominence or article quality could influence both posting and citations. The paper acknowledges the converse explanation but offers no matching, covariate adjustment, or within-author analysis.
↳ Results and Discussion, pp. 377–378
Open-access status was observed during data collection without establishing when copies were posted relative to citation accumulation. Nevertheless, the discussion attributes higher citations to easier discovery and reading.
↳ Data Collection, p. 376; Results and Discussion, p. 377
The article makes a genuine early contribution by comparing article-level availability and citations within journals across four disciplines. Its descriptive mean differences are clearly reported, but the inferential support is uncertain because the signed-rank test named for the apparently independent groups may be inappropriate. More fundamentally, author and article self-selection are not controlled, and posting dates are not ordered against citation accumulation. The literature review and practical relevance to libraries remain substantive, but the conclusions should be read as evidence of association rather than a causal citation benefit.
Nabu’s assessment, alongside the field’s view.
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Limited2.7
Confidence highThe study meaningfully extends early article-level open-access citation research across four disciplines and distinguishes its within-journal comparison from journal-level studies. The advance remains incremental and observational rather than causally resolving the citation advantage.
“comparing the research impact of articles taken from the same issues of the same journals is a more solid methodology”
The sampling protocol, access classification, and citation summaries are described in useful detail, but self-selection and exposure timing are not analytically controlled. The reported signed-rank test also appears mismatched to the independent groups, creating a reliability concern around the p-values.
“the two-sided Wilcoxon signed rank test, was run for each discipline”
The paper follows a clear question-method-results-conclusion sequence and presents the principal comparisons in tables and figures. Phrases such as “being rewarded for it” materially imply a causal benefit that the cross-sectional analysis cannot establish.
“scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access practices and being rewarded for it”
The introduction engages relevant early studies and explains the distinction between article-level and journal-level comparisons. Reverse causation is raised but dismissed through informal observations of posting behavior rather than traced into the certainty of the practical conclusions.
“It is conceivable that the converse is true”
Lower confidence on Reporting, Positioning — domain match limited.
Concerns3 of 4 checks
The inferential test named for the central group comparisons appears mismatched to the independent samples, potentially affecting the reported p-values. Small discrepancies also occur between sample counts in Table 1 and Figure 1.
The study analyzes bibliographic records and public web-search results, with no design-based requirement for human-subjects approval and no identified conduct contradiction. Missing modern registration, conflict, data, and code statements are era-appropriate absences.
Flags: 0 declared / 5 total
Reference integrity check could not run: no references section detected in extracted text.
0 references in manuscript
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.
The analysis uses actual articles, citation records, and observed online availability, making it relevant to operational scholarly communication. It does not evaluate a repository intervention or estimate the causal returns needed for implementation guidance.
“These data provide a snapshot in time”
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