Numerous studies have shown that publishing openly – whether in an OA journal, or self-archiving in an open repository – confers a citation advantage.

Article sharing

Manuscripts posted in open repositories prior to formal publication are called preprints. Preprints start gathering citations earlier and maintain a citation advantage over articles published only in traditional journals for months or years to come.

Source: Anne Gentil-Beccot, Salvatore Mele, and Travis Brooks. 2009. arXiv:0906.5418v2.

Source: Anne Gentil-Beccot, Salvatore Mele, and Travis Brooks. 2009. arXiv:0906.5418v2.

And it's not just one study. The Open Access Citation Advantage Service, maintained by SPARC Europe, keeps an up-to-date list of relevant citation studies and summaries of their results. To date, the majority of studies find a significant citation advantage of publishing openly.

Source: Data from The Open Access Citation Advantage Service, SPARC Europe. Accessed October, 2015. Figure produced by E.C. McKiernan (CC BY).

The open access citation advantage holds for diverse fields, with maximum percent increases in citations from 36-600%!