The impact of open access publishing (and other access initiatives) on use and users of digital scholarly journals

Authors: Nicholas, David; Huntington, Paul; Jamali, Hamid R.

Source: Learned Publishing, Volume 20, Number 1, January 2007 , pp. 11-15(5)

Publisher: Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers

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Abstract:

Oxford University Press moved one of its most prestigious journals, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), to a full open access (OA), author-pays publishing model in January 2005. A deep log analysis study was carried out in order to determine the impact of this move to OA on the use and users of the journal. Surprisingly the findings showed that although there was a 143% increase in use from early 2003 to January 2005, it was search engines and robots that accounted for a high proportion of the increased use. Robots were responsible for half of sessions in the second quarter of 2005, compared to 1% in the second quarter of 2003.

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Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/095315107779490599

Publication date: 2007-01-01

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Editor in Chief: Alan Singleton
North American Editor: Diane Scott-Lichter
Reviews Editor: Pippa Smart

Learned Publishing is the journal of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, published in collaboration with the Society for Scholarly Publishing. The journal is published quarterly in January/April/July/October.

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