Open access route and citation impact in orthopaedic research: A comparison of Gold/hybrid, Green, and Bronze open access within ten high-impact subscription-based journals
4 affiliations
- 1University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada
- 2McMaster University, Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
- 3McMaster University, Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
- 4University of Maryland, Department of Orthopaedics, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America
Abstract
Open access (OA) publishing has expanded access to research, but citation patterns may differ across OA routes. We examined the association between OA route and citation rate within ten high-impact, predominantly subscription-based orthopaedic journals, analysing 24,115 articles published from 2014 to 2019. Journals in which more than 95% of articles were OA were excluded by design; fully OA journals were therefore not represented, and every Gold OA article in this corpus was published as hybrid OA within a subscription journal (hereafter Gold/hybrid OA). Articles were classified as Gold/hybrid OA, Green OA, Bronze OA, or Closed Access using Web of Science OA indicators. Results are reported in three layers: unadjusted descriptive comparisons, a primary adjusted analysis, andsensitivity analyses. The primary analysis used an entropy-balanced negative binomial generalized linear mixed model adjusting for publication year, document type, author count, and journal influence, with journal-level random effects. Most articles were Closed Access (78.5%), followed by Green OA (9.1%), Bronze OA (8.7%), and Gold/hybrid OA (3.8%). In the primary analysis, Gold/hybrid OA and Green OA had higher citation rates than Closed Access (rate ratio 1.41, 95% CI 1.30–1.54; and 1.35, 95% CI 1.28–1.43), and did not differ from each other (1.04, 95% CI 0.95–1.15). Citation rates varied by publication year: Gold/hybrid OA had the highest predicted rate in recent cohorts and Green OA in older cohorts with longer follow-up. Bronze OA had the lowest unadjusted citation counts, largely because it was enriched for lower-cited document types. The higher citation rates for Gold/hybrid and Green OA persisted across all sensitivity analyses. Within subscription-based orthopaedic journals, OA routes are not interchangeable; these findings do not extend to fully OA journals.
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BibTeX
@article{daniels2026open,
title = {{Open access route and citation impact in orthopaedic research: A comparison of Gold/hybrid, Green, and Bronze open access within ten high-impact subscription-based journals}},
author = {William J. Daniels and Michelle Cruickshank and Taylor Dejong and Michelle Ghert},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0360532},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360532},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Open access route and citation impact in orthopaedic research: A comparison of Gold/hybrid, Green, and Bronze open access within ten high-impact subscription-based journals
AU - William J. Daniels
AU - Michelle Cruickshank
AU - Taylor Dejong
AU - Michelle Ghert
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0360532
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360532
AB - Open access (OA) publishing has expanded access to research, but citation patterns may differ across OA routes. We examined the association between OA route and citation rate within ten high-impact, predominantly subscription-based orthopaedic journals, analysing 24,115 articles published from 2014 to 2019. Journals in which more than 95% of articles were OA were excluded by design; fully OA journals were therefore not represented, and every Gold OA article in this corpus was published as hybrid OA within a subscription journal (hereafter Gold/hybrid OA). Articles were classified as Gold/hybrid OA, Green OA, Bronze OA, or Closed Access using Web of Science OA indicators. Results are reported in three layers: unadjusted descriptive comparisons, a primary adjusted analysis, andsensitivity analyses. The primary analysis used an entropy-balanced negative binomial generalized linear mixed model adjusting for publication year, document type, author count, and journal influence, with journal-level random effects. Most articles were Closed Access (78.5%), followed by Green OA (9.1%), Bronze OA (8.7%), and Gold/hybrid OA (3.8%). In the primary analysis, Gold/hybrid OA and Green OA had higher citation rates than Closed Access (rate ratio 1.41, 95% CI 1.30–1.54; and 1.35, 95% CI 1.28–1.43), and did not differ from each other (1.04, 95% CI 0.95–1.15). Citation rates varied by publication year: Gold/hybrid OA had the highest predicted rate in recent cohorts and Green OA in older cohorts with longer follow-up. Bronze OA had the lowest unadjusted citation counts, largely because it was enriched for lower-cited document types. The higher citation rates for Gold/hybrid and Green OA persisted across all sensitivity analyses. Within subscription-based orthopaedic journals, OA routes are not interchangeable; these findings do not extend to fully OA journals.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -