Josh Schwartzman, Max Shron – Open Access Meets Discoverability: Citations to Articles Posted to Academia.edu
“Using matching and regression analyses, we measure the difference in citations between articles posted to Academia.edu and other articles from similar journals, controlling for field, impact factor, and other variables. Based on a sample size of 34,940 papers, we find that a paper in a median impact factor journal uploaded to Academia.edu receives 41% more citations after one year than a similar article not available online, 50% more citations after three years, and 73% after five years. We also found that articles also posted to Academia.edu had 64% more citations than articles only posted to other online venues, such as personal and departmental homepages, after five years.”