Does Online Availability Increase Citations? Theory and Evidence from a Panel of Economics and Business Journals
利用经济学和商业期刊的引用面板数据，研究发现先前研究中在线可获取性对引用的大幅提升效应是未能控制文章质量的假象，但JSTOR平台仍能显著增加约10%的引用。
Does online availability boost citations? Using a panel of citations to economics and business journals, we show that the enormous effects found in previous studies were an artifact of their failure to control for article quality, disappearing once fixed effects are added as controls. The absence of aggregate effects masks heterogeneity across platforms: JSTOR has a uniquely large effect, boosting citations around 10%. We examine other sources of heterogeneity, including whether JSTOR disproportionately increases cites from developing countries or to “long-tail” articles. Our theoretical analysis informs the econometric specification and allows citation increases to be translated into welfare terms. © 2015 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology