More on the Eysenbach study

Robin Peek, The Impact of Open Choice, Information Today, July/August 2006. Excerpt:

The findings of a study released last month in PLoS Biology reveal that articles that are published by the author-pays open access (OA) approach are cited more often than those that are published in the same journal and that are publicly released 6 months after publication.

The papers were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In this hybrid journal (also known in OA circles as open choice), authors (or their funders) can pay $1,000 for immediate free access. In June 2004, PNAS became one of the first journals to make this option available to its authors.

Gunther Eysenbach, a health-policy specialist at the University of Toronto, is a self-described "moderate" advocate of OA publishing. He said, "I think in the future there will be a role for both business models, author-pays and reader-pays. I don't evangelize." Eysenbach also noted in an interview with Medscape Today that "unless you have a top paper that is publishable in one of the [five] major general medical journals-it is always better to publish in an OA journal than in a toll-access specialist journal."...

According to Eysenbach, "The strength of the OA effect is particularly surprising because PNAS is a widely available journal that is accessible for most researchers through their library. In addition, articles are made freely available to nonsubscribers 6 months after publication." He suggested, "The effect of OA publishing may be even higher in fields where journals are not widely available and where articles from the control group remain 'toll-access.?"...