NWB2023_The Open access citation advantage in the context of scholarly publishing at a higher education institution

In our study, the Open Access Citation Advantage effect is measured in publications authored by researchers at Malmö University within a five-year period. We explore the effect in the context of scholarly publishing at higher education institutions. Slight OACA was measured in the full dataset, despite higher average JIFs of the non-OA journals. The strength of the effect was field specific. Within highly specialized disciplines, researchers tend to publish in a limited set of journals, prompting libraries to acquire access so that citation potential within the field can be achieved despite paywalls. Coverage in repositories such as SciHub or ResearchGate, possibly weakening the effect, might, too, be field specific. The effect was strongest for the green OA variant, followed by hybrid, bronze and gold. These results may inform the development of publishing strategies. Researchers do not have to compromise between OA publishing or achieving citation impact, indicating that citation-based evaluation does not necessarily hinder progress toward open science. Publishing in journals with limited or no OA options might prevent publications from achieving their citation potential, however, this appears to apply for the gold OA variant as well, probably due to the relatively young average age of fully OA journals. Importantly, green OA can provide at least as high of a citation advantage as paid OA in hybrid journals, offering researchers a no-cost option for increasing their impact. We may see changes in the effect as OA publishing becomes increasingly more widespread and fully OA journals establish their reputation.