{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,18]],"date-time":"2026-07-18T02:58:55Z","timestamp":1784343535932,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":46,"publisher":"PeerJ","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,27]],"date-time":"2024-02-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1708992000000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Authors are often faced with the decision of whether to maximize traditional impact metrics or minimize costs when choosing where to publish the results of their research. Many subscription-based journals now offer the option of paying an article processing charge (APC) to make their work open. Though such \u201chybrid\u201d journals make research more accessible to readers, their APCs often come with high price tags and can exclude authors who lack the capacity to pay to make their research accessible. Here, we tested if paying to publish open access in a subscription-based journal benefited authors by conferring more citations relative to closed access articles. We identified 146,415 articles published in 152 hybrid journals in the field of biology from 2013\u20132018 to compare the number of citations between various types of open access and closed access articles. In a simple generalized linear model analysis of our full dataset, we found that publishing open access in hybrid journals that offer the option confers an average citation advantage to authors of 17.8 citations compared to closed access articles in similar journals. After taking into account the number of authors, Journal Citation Reports 2020 Quartile, year of publication, and Web of Science category, we still found that open access generated significantly more citations than closed access (\n                    <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                    \u00a0&lt;\u00a00.0001). However, results were complex, with exact differences in citation rates among access types impacted by these other variables. This citation advantage based on access type was even similar when comparing open and closed access articles published in the same issue of a journal (\n                    <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                    \u00a0&lt;\u00a00.0001). However, by examining articles where the authors paid an article processing charge, we found that cost itself was not predictive of citation rates (\n                    <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                    \u00a0=\u00a00.14). Based on our findings of access type and other model parameters, we suggest that, in the case of the 152 journals we analyzed, paying for open access does confer a citation advantage. For authors with limited budgets, we recommend pursuing open access alternatives that do not require paying a fee as they still yielded more citations than closed access. For authors who are considering where to submit their next article, we offer additional suggestions on how to balance exposure\n                    <jats:italic>via<\/jats:italic>\n                    citations with publishing costs.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.7717\/peerj.16824","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,27]],"date-time":"2024-02-27T03:58:36Z","timestamp":1709006316000},"page":"e16824","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":21,"title":["Does it pay to pay? A comparison of the benefits of open-access publishing across various sub-fields in biology"],"prefix":"10.7717","volume":"12","author":[{"given":"Amanda D.","family":"Clark","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"},{"name":"Department of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology, University of Alabama-Birmingham,  Birmingham, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tanner C.","family":"Myers","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Todd D.","family":"Steury","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Forestry, Wildlife, and Environment, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ali","family":"Krzton","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Auburn University Libraries, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Julio","family":"Yanes","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Angela","family":"Barber","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jacqueline","family":"Barry","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Subarna","family":"Barua","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Pathobiology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Katherine","family":"Eaton","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Devadatta","family":"Gosavi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Rebecca","family":"Nance","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Pathobiology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zahida","family":"Pervaiz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chidozie","family":"Ugochukwu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Patricia","family":"Hartman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Auburn University Libraries, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Laurie S.","family":"Stevison","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"4443","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,27]]},"reference":[{"issue":"5","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"301","DOI":"10.1016\/j.tree.2018.02.005","article-title":"Inexpensive research in the golden open-access era","volume":"33","author":"Alizon","year":"2018","journal-title":"Trends in Ecology & Evolution"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"233","DOI":"10.1038\/d41586-022-03201-w","article-title":"Why I think ending article-processing charges will save open access","volume":"610","author":"Alperin","year":"2022","journal-title":"Nature"},{"issue":"4","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"777","DOI":"10.21037\/jgo.2019.02.13","article-title":"The impact of the open-access status on journal indices: oncology journals","volume":"10","author":"AlRyalat","year":"2019","journal-title":"Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-4","first-page":"1","article-title":"Exploring the hidden impacts of open access financing mechanisms: AAAS survey on scholarly publication experiences & perspectives","author":"American Association for the Advancement of Science","year":"2022"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-5","first-page":"1","article-title":"Research impact of paywalled versus open access papers","author":"Archambault","year":"2016","journal-title":"Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, Etc."},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"121","DOI":"10.1108\/IDD-09-2021-0098","article-title":"Determinants of article processing charges for hybrid and gold open access journals","volume":"51","author":"Asai","year":"2022","journal-title":"Information Discovery and Delivery"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"459","DOI":"10.1007\/s11192-020-03734-9","article-title":"Do open access journal articles experience a citation advantage? Results and methodological reflections of an application of multiple measures to an analysis by WoS subject areas","volume":"126","author":"Basson","year":"2021","journal-title":"Scientometrics"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e3878","DOI":"10.7717\/peerj.3878","article-title":"Growth of hybrid open access, 2009\u20132016","volume":"5","author":"Bj\u00f6rk","year":"2017","journal-title":"PeerJ"},{"issue":"3","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2185","DOI":"10.1007\/s11192-020-03578-3","article-title":"Drivers of article processing charges in open access","volume":"124","author":"Budzinski","year":"2020","journal-title":"Scientometrics"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1162\/qss_a_00272","article-title":"The oligopoly\u2019s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges","author":"Butler","year":"2023","journal-title":"Quantitative Science Studies"},{"issue":"3","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"872","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1523-1739.2010.01509.x","article-title":"Patterns of citations of open access and non-open access conservation biology journal papers and book chapters","volume":"24","author":"Calver","year":"2010","journal-title":"Conservation Biology: The Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology"},{"issue":"1916","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"20192047","DOI":"10.1098\/rspb.2019.2047","article-title":"Games academics play and their consequences: how authorship, h-index and journal impact factors are shaping the future of academia","volume":"286","author":"Chapman","year":"2019","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1101\/2022.12.10.519925","article-title":"Does it pay to pay? A comparison of the benefits of open-access publishing across various sub-fields in Biology","author":"Clark","year":"2022","journal-title":"BioRxiv"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1139\/facets-2016-0032","article-title":"Open access articles receive more citations in hybrid marine ecology journals","volume":"2","author":"Clements","year":"2017","journal-title":"Facets"},{"issue":"3","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"239","DOI":"10.1016\/j.joi.2007.04.001","article-title":"Do open access articles have greater citation impact?: a critical review of the literature","volume":"1","author":"Craig","year":"2007","journal-title":"Journal of Informetrics"},{"issue":"2","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"877","DOI":"10.1007\/s11192-017-2422-y","article-title":"Reconsidering the gold open access citation advantage postulate in a multidisciplinary context: an analysis of the subject categories in the Web of Science database 2009\u20132014","volume":"112","author":"Dorta-Gonz\u00e1lez","year":"2017","journal-title":"Scientometrics"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-17","first-page":"1","article-title":"Going for gold: exploring the reach and impact of Gold open access articles in hybrid journals","author":"Emery","year":"2021","journal-title":"Technical report"},{"issue":"5","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e157","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pbio.0040157","article-title":"Citation advantage of open access articles","volume":"4","author":"Eysenbach","year":"2006","journal-title":"PLOS Biology"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-19","volume-title":"An R companion to applied regression, Third edition","author":"Fox","year":"2019"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-20","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"106","DOI":"10.1177\/0961000616657406","article-title":"What does \u2018green\u2019 open access mean? Tracking twelve years of changes to journal publisher self-archiving policies","volume":"51","author":"Gadd","year":"2019","journal-title":"Journal of Librarianship and Information Science"},{"issue":"6","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-21","article-title":"Comparing the impact of open access (OA) vs. non-OA articles in the same journals","volume":"10","author":"Harnad","year":"2004","journal-title":"D-Lib Magazine"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"645","DOI":"10.1007\/s11192-019-03301-x","article-title":"Do articles in open access journals have more frequent altmetric activity than articles in subscription-based journals? An investigation of the research output of Finnish universities","volume":"122","author":"Holmberg","year":"2020","journal-title":"Scientometrics"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"712","DOI":"10.1002\/pra2.2017.14505401126","article-title":"Open access citation advantage? A local study at a large research university","volume":"54","author":"Hubbard","year":"2017","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"104","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.24549","article-title":"Toward transparency of hybrid open access through publisher-provided metadata: an article-level study of Elsevier","volume":"73","author":"Jahn","year":"2022","journal-title":"Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-25","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.18352\/lq.10280","article-title":"Article processing charge hyperinflation and price insensitivity: an open access sequel to the serials crisis","volume":"29","author":"Khoo","year":"2019","journal-title":"LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-26","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"578","DOI":"10.35099\/aurora-75","article-title":"Support scholars who share: combating the mismatch between openness policies and professional rewards","author":"Krzton","year":"2019"},{"issue":"4","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"919","DOI":"10.1016\/j.joi.2016.08.002","article-title":"Hybrid open access\u2014A longitudinal study","volume":"10","author":"Laakso","year":"2016","journal-title":"Journal of Informetrics"},{"issue":"6","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-28","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e0253129","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0253129","article-title":"Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles","volume":"16","author":"Langham-Putrow","year":"2021","journal-title":"PLOS ONE"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-29","author":"Lenth","year":"2022","journal-title":"emmeans: estimated marginal means, aka least-squares means"},{"issue":"3","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-30","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"50","DOI":"10.6017\/ital.v37i3.10604","article-title":"The open access citation advantage: does it exist and what does it mean for libraries?","volume":"37","author":"Lewis","year":"2018","journal-title":"Information Technology and Libraries"},{"issue":"4","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1284","DOI":"10.1111\/ecin.12064","article-title":"Identifying the effect of open access on citations using a panel of science journals","volume":"52","author":"McCabe","year":"2014","journal-title":"Economic Inquiry"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-32","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e47338","DOI":"10.7554\/eLife.47338","article-title":"Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations","volume":"8","author":"McKiernan","year":"2019","journal-title":"ELife"},{"issue":"4","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-33","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"711","DOI":"10.1111\/ele.13949","article-title":"Can I afford to publish? A dilemma for African scholars","volume":"25","author":"Mekonnen","year":"2022","journal-title":"Ecology Letters"},{"issue":"13","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2047","DOI":"10.1002\/asi.20663","article-title":"The effect of \u201copen access\u201d on citation impact: an analysis of ArXiv\u2019s condensed matter section","volume":"58","author":"Moed","year":"2007","journal-title":"Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-35","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.6084\/m9.figshare.11988123.v4","article-title":"\u2019APCs in the Wild\u2019: Could increased monitoring and consolidation of funding accelerate the transition to open access?","author":"Monaghan","year":"2020","journal-title":"Figshare"},{"issue":"8","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-36","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e0159614","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0159614","article-title":"The post-embargo open access citation advantage: it exists (probably), it\u2019s modest (usually), and the rich get richer (of course)","volume":"11","author":"Ottaviani","year":"2016","journal-title":"PLOS ONE"},{"issue":"1","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-37","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1111\/ddi.12885","article-title":"Open access solutions for biodiversity journals: do not replace one problem with another","volume":"25","author":"Peterson","year":"2019","journal-title":"Diversity and Distributions"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-38","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e4375","DOI":"10.7717\/peerj.4375","article-title":"The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles","volume":"6","author":"Piwowar","year":"2018","journal-title":"PeerJ"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-39","article-title":"R: a language and environment for statistical computing","author":"R Core Team","year":"2020"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-40","article-title":"Sherpa Romeo. Sherpa services","author":"Romeo","year":"2024"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-41","article-title":"RStudio: integrated development for R","author":"RStudio Team","year":"2020"},{"issue":"4","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-42","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"377","DOI":"10.1016\/j.acalib.2019.05.004","article-title":"How do self-archiving and author-pays models associate and contribute to OA citation advantage within hybrid journals?","volume":"45","author":"Sotudeh","year":"2019","journal-title":"Journal of Academic Librarianship"},{"issue":"7","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-43","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e01887","DOI":"10.1002\/ecs2.1887","article-title":"Open access increases citations of papers in ecology","volume":"8","author":"Tang","year":"2017","journal-title":"Ecosphere"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-44","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"632","DOI":"10.12688\/f1000research.8460.3","article-title":"The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review","volume":"5","author":"Tennant","year":"2016","journal-title":"F1000Research"},{"issue":"7710","key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-45","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"345","DOI":"10.1038\/d41586-018-05467-5","article-title":"How will you judge me if not by impact factor?","volume":"558","author":"Tregoning","year":"2018","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"10.7717\/peerj.16824\/ref-46","article-title":"Unpaywall","author":"Unpaywall","year":"2024"}],"container-title":["PeerJ"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/16824.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/16824.xml","content-type":"application\/xml","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/16824.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/16824.pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,27]],"date-time":"2024-02-27T03:58:51Z","timestamp":1709006331000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/peerj.com\/articles\/16824"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,27]]},"references-count":46,"alternative-id":["10.7717\/peerj.16824"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.7717\/peerj.16824","archive":["CLOCKSS","LOCKSS","Portico"],"relation":{"has-preprint":[{"id-type":"doi","id":"10.1101\/2022.12.10.519925","asserted-by":"object"}]},"ISSN":["2167-8359"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2167-8359","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,2,27]]},"article-number":"e16824"}}