Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Communication, 301 Kennedy Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
J Med Libr Assoc. 2011 Jul;99(3):208-17. doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.99.3.008.
The paper reviews recent studies that evaluate the impact of free access (open access) on the behavior of scientists as authors, readers, and citers in developed and developing nations. It also examines the extent to which the biomedical literature is used by the general public.
The paper is a critical review of the literature, with systematic description of key studies.
Researchers report that their access to the scientific literature is generally good and improving. For authors, the access status of a journal is not an important consideration when deciding where to publish. There is clear evidence that free access increases the number of article downloads, although its impact on article citations is not clear. Recent studies indicate that large citation advantages are simply artifacts of the failure to adequately control for confounding variables. The effect of free access on the general public's use of the primary medical literature has not been thoroughly evaluated.
Recent studies provide little evidence to support the idea that there is a crisis in access to the scholarly literature. Further research is needed to investigate whether free access is making a difference in non-research contexts and to better understand the dissemination of scientific literature through peer-to-peer networks and other informal mechanisms.
本文综述了近期有关免费获取（开放获取）对发达国家和发展中国家科学家作为作者、读者和引文者行为影响的研究。还考察了大众对生物医学文献的使用程度。
本文是对文献的批判性综述，对关键研究进行了系统描述。
研究人员报告称，他们获取科学文献的途径总体上良好且在不断改善。对于作者来说，期刊的获取状态并不是决定发表地点的重要考虑因素。有明确证据表明，免费获取会增加文章下载量，尽管其对文章引用的影响尚不清楚。最近的研究表明，大量引文优势只是未能充分控制混杂变量的结果。免费获取对大众使用主要医学文献的影响尚未得到彻底评估。
近期研究几乎没有提供证据支持学术文献获取存在危机的观点。需要进一步研究，以调查免费获取是否在非研究环境中产生影响，并更好地理解通过同行网络和其他非正式机制传播科学文献的情况。
