Scholarly journals are increasingly using social media to share their latest research publications and communicate with their readers. Having a presence on social media gives journals a platform to raise their profile and promote their content. This study compares the number of clicks received when journals provide two types of links to subscription articles: open access (OA) and paid content links. We examine the OA effect using unique matched-pair data for the journal Nature Materials. Our study finds that OA links perform better than paid content links. In particular, when the journal does not indicate that a link to an article is an OA link, there is an obvious drop in performance against clicks on links indicating OA status. OA has a positive effect on the number of clicks in all countries, but its positive impact is slightly greater in developed countries. The results suggest that free content is more attractive to users than paid content. Social media exposure of scholarly articles promotes the use of research outputs. Combining social media dissemination with OA appears to enhance the reach of scientific information. However, extensive further efforts are needed to remove barriers to OA.
翻译:学术期刊越来越多地利用社交媒体分享其最新研究出版物并与读者交流。社交媒体的存在为期刊提供了一个平台来提升其形象并宣传其内容。本研究比较了当期刊提供订阅文章的两种链接:公开访问(OA)和付费内容链接时收到的点击次数。我们利用《自然材料》杂志的独特匹配版数据来检查OA效应。我们的研究发现OA链接比付费内容链接效果更好。特别是当杂志没有显示与文章的链接是OA链接时,与显示OA状况的链接的点击次数相比,表现明显下降。OA对所有国家的点击次数产生了积极影响,但其积极影响在发达国家略大一些。结果显示,免费内容对用户的吸引力大于付费内容。对学术文章的社交媒体曝光促进了研究成果的使用。将社会媒体传播与OA链接起来似乎可以扩大科学信息的覆盖面。然而,还需要做出大量进一步努力,以消除对OA的障碍。