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Open access (OA) articles are freely accessible online, either on the publisher/journal website or in a repository, a publicly available, free-of-charge online database. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether OA publication confers a citation advantage in pediatric orthopaedics. Pediatric orthopaedic studies published in English from 1/2012-6/2012 were identified through EMBASE, Cochrane, and PubMed. Abstract screening and full-text evaluation were performed in duplicate. Citation counts over 10 years following publication, 2012 journal impact factor, OA status, type of OA, journal field, geographic location of last author and journal publication, study design, study focus, subspecialty, level of evidence, and presence of funding were recorded. Statistical analyses were performed using independent samples t-tests, one-way ANOVA, Chi-Square tests, and multivariate linear regression analysis. Of this study's 989 pediatric orthopaedic articles, 43.8% were OA. Mean citation count was 19.8±24.2 on Web of Science. Compared to OA publications, non-OA publications were more likely to be published in a journal from North America, have a last author from North America, be indexed in Journal Citation Reports, and published in pediatric orthopaedic journals (p=0.001). In multivariate linear regression analysis, OA publication, higher levels of evidence, publication in a journal with higher impact factor, having a last author from Europe or North America, and study funding were associated with significantly increased citation counts. Articles in OA journals were cited an additional 3 times, on average, over 10 years. Open access publication in pediatric orthopaedics confers an advantage of 3 extra citations over a decade, on average. III Publications in open access journals are cited three times as much as non-open access journals over a 10 year time period. Articles published in pediatric orthopaedic journals have a 43.8% open-access rate compared to 70.5 % in overall orthopaedic journals.
Sidharthan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.