Re: Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads?

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

Stevan Harnad wrote:

"The full text of Phil Davis's paper is not yet accessible, so I 
can only respond to the abstract...."

The fulltext of the article is available, and I urge those who 
have knee-jerk reactions based on the abstract alone to please 
read the article.  I agree that this article challenges the 
central orthodoxy that Open Access causes more citations.  Based 
on our analysis, we found that a quality differential is a more 
plausible explanation -- the reason why arXiv-deposited articles 
receive more citations is simply because they are better 
articles, not because of some advantage conveyed through 
increased access.  If Open Access can explain the citation 
advantage (and we did confirm one), it is only responsible for 
giving an advantage to already highly-cited articles.

Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads for
mathematics articles?
Authors: Philip M. Davis, Michael J. Fromerth
http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0603056