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Science 20 February 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5917, p. 1025
DOI: 10.1126/science.1154562
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Brevia

Open Access and Global Participation in Science

James A. Evans1* and Jacob Reimer2

Previous investigations into the impact of open-access journals on subsequent citations confounded open and electronic access and failed to track availability over time. With new data, we separated these effects. We demonstrate that a journal receives a modest increase in citations when it comes online freely, but the jump is larger when it first comes online through commercial sources. This effect reverses for poor countries where free-access articles are much more likely to be cited. Together, findings suggest that free Internet access widens the circle of those who read and make use of scientists' investigations.

1 Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
2 Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jevans{at}uchicago.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)