Delayed Open Access – an overlooked high-impact category of openly available scientific literature
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-10-24
Summary:
Use the link to access the full text preprint of article from the institutional repository of the Hanken School of Economics. The paper has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. The abstract reads as follows: "Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made
available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set
embargo period. Though a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA
since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning open access have
often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative
measurements by identifying delayed OA journals, collecting data concerning their
publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether 492 journals were
identified, publishing a combined total of 111 312 articles in 2011. 77,8 % of these
articles were made open access within 12 months from publication, with 85,4 %
becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that
delayed OA journals have on average twice as high average citation rates compared to
closed subscription journals, and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall
the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of
the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume as
well as by including a substantial proportion of high impact journals."