Open Access

Does Open Access Result In More Policy Citations?

November 15, 2022 3890
Overton's poster at the OASPA conference 2022
The poster Overton used to describe its findings.

Overton — the world’s largest searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers — recently presented a short lightning talk and poster at the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association conference. Our talk focused on whether or not there was an open access citation advantage (OACA) when it comes to policy documents. 

logo for Overton
This post by Katherine Stephan originally appeared on the blog of Overton.io under the title “Is there an Open Access advantage for policy citations? We think so (but there’s more to explore).” To know more about the data Overton collected, more information or would like a trial, contact them at support@overton.io

There is some evidence that there is an OACA when it comes to citing research. It could (and should?) follow that if something is easier to read, then it would at least be accessible to cite. On the flip side, we were distinctly aware that policymakers may not know, or care, about OA if they aren’t routinely engaged in the academic sphere.

We wanted to discover whether, if research is more accessible, this translates into more OA papers being cited within policy so our data scientist Angel did a small analysis of some of our data. 

He:

  • Gathered a random sample of 20,000 scholarly articles published between 2017 and 2022 from CrossRef to estimate the proportion of scholarly articles that are open access. 
  • Also took a sample of 20,000 scholarly articles cited in policy from Overton’s database, to estimate what proportion of them are open access. 
  • He then collected all of the scholarly articles cited by the UK government between 2017 and 2022, and examined the proportion of open-access articles in these citations and compared it to those cited by the Japanese government during the same time period. 
  • Lastly, he repeated the same above analysis for UK Parliament Research Briefings.

We found a number of interesting things for our samples between 2017-2022:.

  • There is a higher percentage of open access v not open access papers cited within policy 
  • The proportion of open-access papers is also increasing over time
  • 70 percent of articles cited by the UK government within policy were open access vs around 67 percent for Japan
  • 80 percent of articles cited by the UK parliamentary research briefings are open access

Now this also brings up a lot of questions that could be explored:

  • Is the work cited because it is relevant/because it is open access/is a certain type of work more likely to be open access?
  • Are policymakers intentionally trying to cite more OA papers?
  • What impact does the UK open access mandate on government-funded research have on citations within policy? 
  • Will the new mandate for USA federally funded research and the NHMRC in Australia to be made OA have an impact on policy citations?

Katherine Stephan, a former product specialist with Overton, is a librarian whose background ranges from being a children’s librarian to scholarly communications and research support within higher education and different library posts in between.

View all posts by Katherine Stephan

Related Articles

Degrading Sites of Punishment and Pain: The Case for Abolishing Prisons
Public Policy
June 9, 2025

Degrading Sites of Punishment and Pain: The Case for Abolishing Prisons

Read Now
Who Gets to Flourish? 
Public Policy
June 5, 2025

Who Gets to Flourish? 

Read Now
David Autor on the Labor Market
Social Science Bites
June 2, 2025

David Autor on the Labor Market

Read Now
Isaac Asimov’s critique of algorithmic thinking
Science & Social Science
June 1, 2025

Isaac Asimov’s critique of algorithmic thinking

Read Now
Pope Francis, Human Dignity, and the Right to Stay, Migrate and Return

Pope Francis, Human Dignity, and the Right to Stay, Migrate and Return

Pope Francis devoted his Message for World Day of Migrants and Refugees in 2023 to the “right” or “freedom” to stay or […]

Read Now
Rosanna Smart Featured at Mark Kleiman Innovation for Public Policy Memorial Lecture 

Rosanna Smart Featured at Mark Kleiman Innovation for Public Policy Memorial Lecture 

Economist Rosanna Smart, a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, will be the featured speaker at the 2025 […]

Read Now
How Can You Serve the Globe’s People If You Don’t Know How Many There Are?

How Can You Serve the Globe’s People If You Don’t Know How Many There Are?

Every day, decisions that affect our lives depend on knowing how many people live where. For example, how many vaccines are needed […]

Read Now
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments