This isn't just a IEEE thing. I had an experience recently where I had a paper accepted into an Operations Research journal and nobody can see and another into an Ed Tech journal which everyone can see and download. Guess which one has more cites. Granted it's not many (4) but it beats the crap out of the 0 I have for an older paper is a higher ranked journal. If you want more cites, more people reading your work, then given them access to it. PDF's are free to duplicate.
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Open Access
This isn't just a IEEE thing. I had an experience recently where I had a paper accepted into an Operations Research journal and nobody can see and another into an Ed Tech journal which everyone can see and download. Guess which one has more cites. Granted it's not many (4) but it beats the crap out of the 0 I have for an older paper is a higher ranked journal. If you want more cites, more people reading your work, then given them access to it. PDF's are free to duplicate.