Open Access legal articles can expect 58% more citations
To date, there have been no studies focusing exclusively on the impact of openaccess on legal scholarship. We examine open access articles from three journalsat the University of Georgia School of Law and confirm that legal scholarshipfreely available via open access improves an article’s research impact. Openaccess legal scholarship – which today appears to account for almost half of theoutput of law faculties – can expect to receive 58% more citations than non-openaccess writings of similar age from the same venue.
The present article offers empirical justification to assert that these benefits are real,consistent, and sizeable. The open access advantage reported for other bodies of literatureextends to include legal scholarship, albeit with some identified caveats. Open access is mostlikely to impact other legal writings, but less so the citations within court opinions.
