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Open access citation advantage

bias exhibited by scholars

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ5427305 ↗
Source-derived summary

Open access citation advantage (OACA) is a type of bias whereby scholars tend to cite academic journals with open access (OA)—that is, journals that make their full text available on the Internet without charge and not behind a paywall—in preference to toll-access publications. The concept was introduced under the name FUTON bias ("full text on the net") by UK medical researcher Reinhard Wentz in a letter to The Lancet in 2002.

Scholars in some fields can more easily discover and access articles whose full text is available online, which increases authors' likelihood of reading and citing these articles, an issue that was first raised and has been mainly studied in connection with medical research. In the context of evidence-based medicine, articles in expensive journals that do not provide open access may be "priced out of evidence", giving a greater weight to open access publications. Open access citation advantage may increase the impact factor of open access journals relative to journals without open access.

One study concluded that authors in medical fields "concentrate on research published in journals that are available as full text on the internet, and ignore relevant studies that are not available in full text, thus introducing an element of bias into their search result". Authors of another study conclude that "the OA advantage is a quality advantage, rather than a quality bias", that authors make a "self-selection toward using and citing the more citable articles—once OA self-archiving has made them accessible", and that open access "itself will not make an unusable (hence uncitable) paper more used and cited".

A similar phenomenon, termed the "no abstract available bias" or NAA bias, is a scholar's tendency to cite journal articles that have an abstract available online more readily than articles that do not—this affects articles' citation count similarly to open access citation advantage.

See also

Digital divide

#ICanHazPDF

Sci-Hub

References

Further reading

Goldsmith, K. (September 27, 2005). "If It Doesn't Exist on the Internet, It Doesn't Exist".

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Open access citation advantage” as bias exhibited by scholars. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2002, 2005—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where access, citation and advantage can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as bias exhibited by scholars. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5427305. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002 and 2005.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Open access citation advantage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.