Open access effect on uncitedness: a large-scale study controlling by discipline, source type and visibility

Pablo Dorta-González, Rafael Suárez-Vega () and María Isabel Dorta-González ()
Additional contact information
Rafael Suárez-Vega: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
María Isabel Dorta-González: Universidad de La Laguna

Scientometrics, 2020, vol. 124, issue 3, No 39, 2619-2644

Abstract: Abstract There are many factors that affect the probability of being uncited during the first years after publication. In this study, we analyze three of these factors for journals, conference proceedings and book series: the field (in 316 subject categories of the Scopus database), the access modality (open access vs. paywalled), and the visibility of the source (through the percentile of the average impact in the subject category). We quantify the effect of these factors on the probability of being uncited. This probability is measured through the percentage of uncited documents in the serial sources of the Scopus database at about two years after publication. As a main result, we do not find any strong correlation between open access and uncitedness. Within the group of most cited journals (Q1 and top 10%), open access journals generally have somewhat lower uncited rates. However, in the intermediate quartiles (Q2 and Q3) almost no differences are observed, while for Q4 the uncited rate is again somewhat lower in the case of the OA group. This is important because it provides new evidence in the debate about open access citation advantage.

Keywords: Uncitedness ratio; Uncited rate; Open access; Differences by field; CiteScore (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-020-03557-8 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:124:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-020-03557-8

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03557-8

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 ().