The Rise and Citation Impact of astro-ph in Major Journals

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the increasing adoption of the astro-ph preprint server in astronomy journals and quantifies its impact on citation rates, showing a consistent doubling of citations for astro-ph posted papers across major journals.

Contribution

It introduces a simple method to measure astro-ph adoption and citation impact over time using NASA's ADS, providing a broad survey across 13 journals.

Findings

Astro-ph adoption has significantly increased over the past decade.

Papers posted to astro-ph are cited roughly twice as often as non-astro-ph papers.

The citation boost for astro-ph papers is consistent across most major astronomy journals.

Abstract

The rise in the use of the arXiv preprint server (astro-ph) over the past decade has led to a major shift in the way astronomical research is disseminated. Schwarz & Kennicutt (2004) recently found that Astrophysical Journal papers posted to astro-ph are cited roughly twice as often as papers that are not posted, suggesting that the preprint server has become the primary resource for many astronomers to keep up with the literature. I describe a simple method to determine the adoption rate and citation impact of astro-ph over time for any journal using NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS). I use the ADS to document the rise in the adoption of astro-ph for three major astronomy journals, and to conduct a broad survey of the citation impact of astro-ph in 13 different journals. I find that the factor of two boost in citations for astro-ph papers is a common feature across most of the major astronomy journals.