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Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles

PURPOSE: To examine whether National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded articles that were archived in PubMed Central (PMC) after the release of the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy show greater scholarly impact than comparable articles not archived in PMC. METHODS: A list of journals across several sub...

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Autores principales: De Groote, Sandra L., Shultz, Mary, Smalheiser, Neil R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4598137/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26448551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139951
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author De Groote, Sandra L.
Shultz, Mary
Smalheiser, Neil R.
author_facet De Groote, Sandra L.
Shultz, Mary
Smalheiser, Neil R.
author_sort De Groote, Sandra L.
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: To examine whether National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded articles that were archived in PubMed Central (PMC) after the release of the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy show greater scholarly impact than comparable articles not archived in PMC. METHODS: A list of journals across several subject areas was developed from which to collect article citation data. Citation information and cited reference counts of the articles published in 2006 and 2009 from 122 journals were obtained from the Scopus database. The articles were separated into categories of NIH funded, non-NIH funded and whether they were deposited in PubMed Central. An analysis of citation data across a five-year timespan was performed on this set of articles. RESULTS: A total of 45,716 articles were examined, including 7,960 with NIH-funding. An analysis of the number of times these articles were cited found that NIH-funded 2006 articles in PMC were not cited significantly more than NIH-funded non-PMC articles. However, 2009 NIH funded articles in PMC were cited 26% more than 2009 NIH funded articles not in PMC, 5 years after publication. This result is highly significant even after controlling for journal (as a proxy of article quality and topic). CONCLUSION: Our analysis suggests that factors occurring between 2006 and 2009 produced a subsequent boost in scholarly impact of PubMed Central. The 2008 Public Access Policy is likely to be one such factor, but others may have contributed as well (e.g., growing size and visibility of PMC, increasing availability of full-text linkouts from PubMed, and indexing of PMC articles by Google Scholar).
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spelling pubmed-45981372015-10-20 Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles De Groote, Sandra L. Shultz, Mary Smalheiser, Neil R. PLoS One Research Article PURPOSE: To examine whether National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded articles that were archived in PubMed Central (PMC) after the release of the 2008 NIH Public Access Policy show greater scholarly impact than comparable articles not archived in PMC. METHODS: A list of journals across several subject areas was developed from which to collect article citation data. Citation information and cited reference counts of the articles published in 2006 and 2009 from 122 journals were obtained from the Scopus database. The articles were separated into categories of NIH funded, non-NIH funded and whether they were deposited in PubMed Central. An analysis of citation data across a five-year timespan was performed on this set of articles. RESULTS: A total of 45,716 articles were examined, including 7,960 with NIH-funding. An analysis of the number of times these articles were cited found that NIH-funded 2006 articles in PMC were not cited significantly more than NIH-funded non-PMC articles. However, 2009 NIH funded articles in PMC were cited 26% more than 2009 NIH funded articles not in PMC, 5 years after publication. This result is highly significant even after controlling for journal (as a proxy of article quality and topic). CONCLUSION: Our analysis suggests that factors occurring between 2006 and 2009 produced a subsequent boost in scholarly impact of PubMed Central. The 2008 Public Access Policy is likely to be one such factor, but others may have contributed as well (e.g., growing size and visibility of PMC, increasing availability of full-text linkouts from PubMed, and indexing of PMC articles by Google Scholar). Public Library of Science 2015-10-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4598137/ /pubmed/26448551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139951 Text en © 2015 De Groote et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
De Groote, Sandra L.
Shultz, Mary
Smalheiser, Neil R.
Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles
title Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles
title_full Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles
title_fullStr Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles
title_full_unstemmed Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles
title_short Examining the Impact of the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy on the Citation Rates of Journal Articles
title_sort examining the impact of the national institutes of health public access policy on the citation rates of journal articles
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4598137/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26448551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139951
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