Open access boosts readership but not citations

An RCT in the BMJ suggests that while open access articles might get viewed more often, they are not cited more than articles published in paid-for journals. The intervention was “random assignment on online publication of articles published in 11 scientific journals to open access (treatment) or subscription access (control).” The researchers (from Cornell) then measured how many times articles were viewed, downloaded, and cited. After one year, while open access articles were downloaded more, they were not more likely to be cited. The authors suggest that “The citation advantage from open access reported widely in the literature may be an artefact of other causes.”