Open access increases citations of papers in ecology

Open access ( OA ) can effectively increase the accessibility and visibility of scientific articles and thus potentially confer them with citation advantages. Such an impact may be more pronounced in developing countries where the cost for journal subscription is comparably expensive and usually unaffordable. By comparing one OA article with one non‐ OA article published in the same issue, we tested the impact of OA on citation advantages of articles published in 46 ecology journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). We compared OA to non‐ OA articles published in the same issue of these journals, thereby controlling for potentially confounding effects of publication requirement and period. OA articles received significantly more citations than non‐ OA articles, and this citation advantage of approximately one citation per year was sustained across publication years from 2009 to 2013. The OA citation advantage did not depend upon income of the country of origin of the citing scientists, and the OA citation advantage was found for citing scientists from North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, but not for Latin America. A total of 10 countries contributed more than 1000 citations each, and the OA citation advantage was found in all the 10 countries except Canada. Therefore, in ecology journals OA confers articles with citation advantages and such an impact accumulates with years and independent of the economic status of the countries. This information may guide decisions of scientific societies, journals, and individual authors as they weigh the relative costs and benefits of open electronic accessibility of scientific research.