From: Mark J McCabe <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 18:06:07 +0200 Hi Folks: Chris Snyder and I have just completed our first empirical analysis of Open Access, as opposed to online access in general (using data from 100 Science Journals). The results are new to this literature, and should generate a fair amount of discussion regarding their implications (which we have not yet begun to formally assess). We would appreciate your feedback too. :-) Regards, Mark McCabe The paper is available on SSRN -- at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2269040 The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum Abstract: An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations. We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content. We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers’ attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely. Number of Pages in PDF File: 39 Keywords: open access, superstars, long tail, journal, citation, search, platform JEL Classification: L17, O33