Which domains do open‐access journals do best in? A 5‐year longitudinal study
基于CiteScore数据,比较开放获取与封闭获取期刊在5年间的学科和动态影响力差异,发现封闭期刊在社会科学占优,开放期刊在医学领域表现更好。
Although researchers have begun to investigate the difference in scientific impact between closed‐access and open‐access journals, studies that focus specifically on dynamic and disciplinary differences remain scarce. This study serves to fill this gap by using a large longitudinal dataset to examine these differences. Using CiteScore as a proxy for journal scientific impact, we employ a series of statistical tests to identify the quartile categories and disciplinary areas in which impact trends differ notably between closed‐ and open‐access journals. We find that closed‐access journals have a noticeable advantage in social sciences (for example, business and economics), whereas open‐access journals perform well in medical and healthcare domains (for example, health profession and nursing). Moreover, we find that after controlling for a journal's rank and disciplinary differences, there are statistically more closed‐access journals in the top 10%, Quartile 1, and Quartile 2 categories as measured by CiteScore; in contrast, more open‐access journals in Quartile 4 gained scientific impact from 2011 to 2015. Considering dynamic and disciplinary trends in tandem, we find that more closed‐access journals in Social Sciences gained in impact, whereas in biochemistry and medicine, more open‐access journals experienced such gains.