AIS Electronic Library (AISeL) - ICIS 2012 Proceedings: The Effect of Free Access on the Diffusion of Scholarly Ideas

This study investigates a relationship between free access to research articles and the diffusion of their ideas as measured by citation counts. By using a dataset from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), an open repository of research articles, and employing a natural experiment that allows the effect of free access separate from other confounding factors, this study identifies the causal effect of free access on the citation counts. The natural experiment in this study is that a select group of published articles is posted on SSRN at a time chosen by their authors’ affiliated organizations or SSRN, not by their authors. Using a difference-in-difference method and comparing the citation profiles of the articles before and after the posting time on SSRN against a group of control articles with similar characteristics, I estimated the effect of the SSRN posting on citation counts to be 10-20% of total citations.