Abstract
This paper evaluates the Spanish open access (OA hereafter) mandate and its effects on Spanish research from 2014 to 2019. First, the degree of compliance with the mandate is studied. Then, classification trees and regression models are applied to determine the factors correlated with publishing in OA and the implications of OA types regarding the impact and visibility of academic articles. Results show that the compliance rate increased by 9% during the studied period, with a prevalence of gold and green OA routes. Moreover, the classification tree points towards the institutions’ nature and the research areas as the variables that better explain OA publishing. We argue that the institutions’ commitment to OA and the different availability of OA journals within research fields influence the decision to publish in OA. Last, we study how these practices affect research’s visibility and impact. We found that, in general, publishing in OA is beneficial for researchers, especially if they choose the green route. Further research at the faculty or departmental level might help discern the best strategies to encourage open-access publishing.
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Notes
Within the term ‘policy,’ we consider a different sect of actions in favor of promoting OA. This includes recommendations, mandates, and requirements (i.e., promotion criteria).
Since regions have different R&D strategies and priorities, regional competitive funding projects remain out of the scope of this work. However, it could be interesting to study OA mandates compliance differences within regions in future works.
Apart from research activities, ISCIII also manages the different calls related to the Strategic Health Action funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
These cases were automatically detected and manually checked. In most cases the errors were minimal and visually detectable without giving rise to doubt i.e. researchers writing ECO2014 57442 P instead of ECO2014-57442-P.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers on previous versions of this manuscript. This study was funded under an FPI contract PRE2020-092917 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation from the DOSSUET project (Diagnosis of open science in the Spanish university system and mechanisms for its transformation and improvement) Grant Number PID2019-104052RB-C21.
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This project is partially funded by the regional Grants for carrying out R&D activity programs between research groups of the Community of Madrid in Social Sciences and Humanities (2019) through the project “Towards the consolidation of inclusive cities, a challenge for Madrid” (CM-INCLUSIVA-CM, H2019/HUM5744).
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Sastrón-Toledo, P., Alonso-Álvarez, P. & Mañana-Rodríguez, J. Compliance with open access mandates and its effects on research visibility: the case of the Spanish National Plan of R&D. Scientometrics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04978-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04978-5