Does the Open Access Business Model Have a Significant Impact on the Citation of Publications? Case Study in the Field of Civil Engineering

Abstract: One of the possible benefits of open access (OA) might be the better visibility of articles, which is usually measured by the number of citations of the article. In order to realistically estimate the effect of OA on citation, it is not enough to compare OA and non-OA ISI journals. Thus, as Harnad and Brody (2004) suggested, the numbers of citations of OA and non-OA articles from the same journals were compared. Therefore, we have chosen to analyze the publications in three international journals in the field of civil engineering. All of them have an ISI impact factor in the Civil engineering subject category in the ISI/Web of science database (WOS). The articles were classified into two groups − the OA publications and the non-OA publications. We analyzed all the articles published in the same year and the number of their citations until the end of February 2012, seeking to find out if these two groups differ from each other.