FUTON bias

FUTON bias is the tendency of scholars to cite academic journals with open access—that is, journals that make their full text available on the Internet without charge—in preference to toll-access publications. ("FUTON" is an acronym for full text on the Net.) Scholars in some fields can more easily discover and access articles whose full text is available online, which increases authors' likelihood of reading and citing these articles, an issue that was first raised and has been mainly studied in connection with medical research.[1][2][3][4] In the context of evidence-based medicine, articles in expensive journals that do not provide open access (OA) may be "priced out of evidence", giving a greater weight to FUTON publications.[5] FUTON bias may increase the impact factor of open-access journals relative to journals without open access.[6]

One study concluded that authors in medical fields "concentrate on research published in journals that are available as full text on the internet, and ignore relevant studies that are not available in full text, thus introducing an element of bias into their search result".[6] Authors of another study conclude that "the OA advantage is a quality advantage, rather than a quality bias", that authors make a "self-selection toward using and citing the more citable articles—once OA self-archiving has made them accessible", and that open access "itself will not make an unusable (hence uncitable) paper more used and cited".[7]

No abstract available bias is a scholar's tendency to cite journal articles that have an abstract available online more readily than articles that do not— this affects articles' citation count similarly to FUTON bias.[1][6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Murali, N. S.; Murali, H. R.; Auethavekiat, P.; Erwin, P. J.; Mandrekar, J. N.; Manek, N. J.; Ghosh, A. K. (2004). "Impact of FUTON and NAA bias on visibility of research" (PDF). Mayo Clinic proceedings. Mayo Clinic 79 (8): 1001–1006. doi:10.4065/79.8.1001. PMID 15301326.
  2. ↑ Ghosh, A. K.; Murali, N. S. (2003). "Online access to nephrology journals: The FUTON bias". Nephrology, dialysis, transplantation : official publication of the European Dialysis and Transplant Association - European Renal Association 18 (9): 1943; author reply 1943. doi:10.1093/ndt/gfg247. PMID 12937253.
  3. ↑ Mueller, P. S.; Murali, N. S.; Cha, S. S.; Erwin, P. J.; Ghosh, A. K. (2006). "The effect of online status on the impact factors of general internal medicine journals". The Netherlands journal of medicine 64 (2): 39–44. PMID 16517987.
  4. ↑ Krieger, M. M.; Richter, R. R.; Austin, T. M. (2008). "An exploratory analysis of PubMed's free full-text limit on citation retrieval for clinical questions". Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA 96 (4): 351–355. doi:10.3163/1536-5050.96.4.010. PMC 2568849. PMID 18974812.
  5. ↑ Gilman, Isaac (2009). "Opening up the Evidence: Evidence-Based Practice and Open Access". Faculty Scholarship (PUL). Pacific University Libraries.
  6. 1 2 3 Wentz, R. (2002). "Visibility of research: FUTON bias". The Lancet 360 (9341): 1256–1256. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11264-5. PMID 12401287.
  7. ↑ Gargouri, Y.; Hajjem, C.; Larivière, V.; Gingras, Y.; Carr, L.; Brody, T.; Harnad, S. (2010). Futrelle, Robert P, ed. "Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research". PLoS ONE 5 (10): e13636. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013636. PMC 2956678. PMID 20976155.

Further reading

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