A primary objective of this research is to identify a framework for universal citation services for open access (OA) materials, an ideal structure for the collection and distribution of citation information and the main requirements of such services. The work led to a recommended proposal that focuses on: • OA contents in IRs rather than on wider OA sources. • Capture and validation of well-structured reference metadata at the point of deposit in the IR. • Presentation of this data to harvesting services for citation indexes. The aim of the proposal is to increase the exposure of open access materials and their references to indexing services, and to motivate new services by reducing setup costs. A combination of distributed and automated tools, with some additional effort by authors, can be used to provide more accurate, more comprehensive (and potentially free) citation indices than currently exist.