With the development of Web 2.0, social media dialogue has been increasingly important within the world of open access (OA), striving for more user-generated content and ease of use. In this article, we analysed the impact of OA articles published by both Chinese and the American researchers using PLOS ONE. Papers published in the same year, using citation and social media metrics, were all used to analyse the correlation between the level of social media metrics and citation. Overall, the impact of OA articles published within the United States is higher than OA articles published in China. The results showed that citations and number of Mendeley readers have a significant correlation, which reflect the similar impact in evaluation of OA articles. However, most social media metrics did not have an obvious correlation with impact evaluation, which indicates the social media metrics are useful when paired with citations, but not irreplaceable to citations. Social media metrics appear to be a useful alternative metrics to accurately reflecting the impact of OA articles within the scientific community.
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