Do open access articles in economics have a citation advantage?

Wohlrabe, Klaus and Birkmeier, Daniel (2014): Do open access articles in economics have a citation advantage?

Abstract

We investigate whether articles in economics that are freely available on the web have a citation advantage over articles with a gated access. Our sample consists of articles from 2005 from 13 economic journals (including the top five journals). In addition to standard mean comparisons we also use a negative-binomial regression model with several covariates to control for potential selection effects and quality bias. Using citation data from three different databases (Web of Science, RePEc and Google Scholar) we show that articles that are freely available on the internet have indeed a significantly higher citation count.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Open Access, Citations, Web of Science, RePEc, Google Scholar
• Subjects: A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A12 - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines; A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A14 - Sociology of Economics

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