Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 12, 2026

Comparing Bibliometric Analysis Using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science Databases
Published on: October 24, 2019
Public accessibility of biomedical articles from PubMed Central reduces journal readership--retrospective cohort
1Phil Davis Consulting, 432 Mitchell St., Ithaca, NY 14850, USA. pmd8@cornell.edu
Abstract:
Does PubMed Central--a government-run digital archive of biomedical articles--compete with scientific society journals? A longitudinal, retrospective cohort analysis of 13,223 articles (5999 treatment, 7224 control) published in 14 society-run biomedical research journals in nutrition, experimental biology, physiology, and radiology between February 2008 and January 2011 reveals a 21.4% reduction in full-text hypertext markup language (HTML) article downloads and a 13.8% reduction in portable document format (PDF) article downloads from the journals' websites when U.S. National Institutes of Health-sponsored articles (treatment) become freely available from the PubMed Central repository. In addition, the effect of PubMed Central on reducing PDF article downloads is increasing over time, growing at a rate of 1.6% per year. There was no longitudinal effect for full-text HTML downloads. While PubMed Central may be providing complementary access to readers traditionally underserved by scientific journals, the loss of article readership from the journal website may weaken the ability of the journal to build communities of interest around research papers, impede the communication of news and events to scientific society members and journal readers, and reduce the perceived value of the journal to institutional subscribers.
Related Concept Videos
Bioavailability: Overview
Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics: Overview
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast, controlled...
Bioequivalence: Overview
Health Literacy
Chi-square Analysis
The chi-square test was developed by Pearson in 1990.
The first step of performing a Chi-square analysis is to establish a null hypothesis, which assumes that there is no real...
