Examining the influence of open access on journals’ citation obsolescence by modeling the actual citation process

Mingyang Wang, Jiaqi Zhang, Guangsheng Chen () and Kah-Hin Chai
Additional contact information
Mingyang Wang: Northeast Forestry University
Jiaqi Zhang: Northeast Forestry University
Guangsheng Chen: Northeast Forestry University
Kah-Hin Chai: National University of Singapore

Scientometrics, 2019, vol. 119, issue 3, No 14, 1641 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper aims to quantify and analyze the impact of open access (OA) on the obsolescence characteristics of journals. A total of 15 journals that changed their status from closed to open access in 2012 and 2013 were selected for a longitudinal obsolescence investigation. Based on the cumulative citation rate distribution model, two ageing time parameters were identified from the actual citation process to quantify the obsolescence of cited journals. The experimental results show that the journal presents three different obsolete phenomena: “Sustainable growth”, “Oscillatory decline” and “Flash in the pan”. OA does have an impact on the obsolescence characteristics of the journal, which is expressed as an increase in the value of the ageing time parameter for any category of journals during or after their conversion year. But this impact does not necessarily persist over time, especially for the latter two types of journals. And OA does affect readers’ concern about the old articles in journals, but this concern may also be short-lived. For journals of “Oscillatory decline” and “Flash in the pan”, their recently published articles will be more concerned than old ones, which has directly led to the growth of journal impact factors. For most of the “Sustainable growth” journals, it has shown a “polarization” tendency of citation distribution: towards citing more newly and more old publications, which also helps to improve the impact factor of journals. However, there are still a few “Sustainable growth” journals with their older articles are more likely to receive attention than newly published ones. In addition to extending the ageing trend for these journals, it does not help to improve journal impact factors. Therefore, OA does not necessarily improve the impact factor of journals.

Keywords: Open access; Obsolescence; Citation distribution model; Impact factor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-019-03085-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:119:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-019-03085-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-019-03085-0

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().