Impact of Social Sciences – Making research articles freely available can help to negate gender citation effects in political science

"In short, when women political scientists make their work freely available online, their research is cited at similar rates to men’s work. This is a very positive finding given the current gender imbalance found in many aspects of the discipline. (Side note: many scholars, regardless of gender, fail to self-archive due to lack of know-how; Carling has written a very helpful primer on the subject. See also Atchison and Bull.)

A final caveat is necessary. These results should be interpreted with caution. First, the finding that OA can help to negate the gender citation advantage is surprising in light of previous research on gendered citation effects. This must be investigated further to determine whether it is an artefact of the data, whether the pattern holds when other data are used, and whether the pattern holds once self-archiving becomes more commonplace in political science. Second, as with any single-discipline study, the results may lack generalisability. There is considerable evidence that GCE varies by discipline, so it will be important to explore the GCE-OA interaction both within and across disciplines."