Osborne and Waters’ (2002) attempt to draw attention
to the assumptions of multiple regression is therefore
commendable, especially so in that it was published in
an open-access journal (PARE). It is a testament to
both the usefulness of clear writing on this topic and
the success of PARE’s open access model that
Osborne and Waters’ article has been viewed more
than 275,000 times as at August 2013 (as per the hit
counter on the html version of the article). This
phenomenal number of page views achieves particular
significance when we consider that Tenopir and King
(2000) estimate that the average scientific article in the
United States is read only 900 times. Osborne and
Waters’ article is also currently one of the first five
results for a Google search for the search terms
regression assumptions, no doubt contributing largely to its
popularity. Its impact on the scientific literature has
likewise been far from trivial, with Google Scholar
listing 219 papers and books as citing the article as at
June 2013.