POINTS FOR OPEN ACCESS.

The article focuses on a controversy related to open-access publishing. A study published online in the open-access "Public Library of Science Biology" suggests that free papers get cited more often. The analysis was conducted by Gunther Lysenbach of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation in Toronto, Canada. It looked at the articles published from June to December 2004 in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," after the journal started letting authors pay $1000 to make their papers immediately available for free. It showed that by April 2005, 78 of the 212 open-access articles had not been cited versus 627 of the 1280 regular articles, which are free online after 6 months. The open-access papers were twice as likely to be cited by April 2005 and three times as likely by October 2005. They also averaged more citations with 6.4 per paper versus 4.5. Some editors admitted that they have a strong and vested interest in the paper but say that it underwent unusually thorough review.