Open Access Dermatology Publishing: No Citation Advantage Yet

Background: Open access journals are a new publication model for sharing scientific information. Objective: To compare the citation frequency of articles published by the same author in traditional pay-for-access and open access dermatology journals. Methods: Articles by authors who published in the open access dermatology journal with the most citations and in any of the five pay-for-access journals with the highest h-indices (Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Archives of Dermatology, British Journal of Dermatology, Dermatologic Surgery) from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2007, were identified. Article citation frequencies were determined using Google Scholar. The citation rates were then adjusted for the bias of perceived prestige of each journal by dividing each article's number of citations by the impact factor of the journal in which it was published. Statistical analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test on both raw and impact factor adjusted data. Results: BioMed Central (BMC) had the most citations of any open access dermatology journal. Thirty-four authors published in both BMC Dermatology and a leading traditional dermatology journal during the study time period. Twenty-four authors had higher average citations to articles in traditional journals; 7 authors had higher average citations to articles in BMC Dermatology; 3 authors had equal average citations. These results were statistically significant with a two tailed pvalue of 0.0014. After weighting citation rates by journal impact factor, 20 authors now had higher average citation rates for their BMC publications and 14 authors had higher citation rates for articles published in traditional, pay-for-access journals, with a p-value of 0.39. Limitations: A definitive study would require the publication of the same articles simultaneously in both open and payfor-access journals such duplicate publication is forbidden by all the journals investigated. In addition, it is possible that authors submit better papers to traditional dermatology journals, which would inherently skew the outcome of this study. Conclusion: Our study finds no statistical difference in citations rates of recent articles by the same authors published in dermatology pay-for-access and the leading open access dermatology journals after weighting by journal impact factor.