Benefits of Open Access

Why-open-access
Why open access [pdf, 118kb]

Writing on the benefits of Open Access

Readers Share Their Stories: Comments on Open Access Articles – MIT has been collecting since July 2012 stories from individuals who have been downloading papers from the MIT repository. A very powerful argument for the breadth of use of open access research.

BioMed Central’s video on the benefits of open access

Duke University Libraries’ page Benefits to open access

RCUK August 2012 blog on The benefits of Open Access 

SPARC Europe’s page on The benefits of open access

Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook’s page Benefits of Open Access for research dissemination

Houghton, J (2009) Open Access – What are the economic benefits? – A comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark

Houghton, J and Sheehan, P (2009) Estimating the Potential Impacts of Open Access to Research Findings, Economic Analysis & Policy, Vol 39, No 1, March

Open Access increases citations

SPARC Europe maintains an overview page: The Open Access Citation Advantage – a follow on to the now discontinued Open Citation (OpCit) Project

Some specific papers are listed below:

[Bibliography] – Hitchcock, S (2012) The effect of open access and downloads (‘hits’) on citation impact: a bibliography of studies

[Bibliography] – Swan, A (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date.

[Bibliography] – Wagner, A.B. (2010) Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography

According to Hitchcock’s site – the top five most-cited papers, as measured by Google Scholar

Lawrence, S., Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact, Nature, 31 May 2001

Harnad, S. and Brody, T., Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals, D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 10 No. 6, June 2004

Antelman, K., Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact? College and Research Libraries, 65(5):372-382, September 2004

Eysenbach, G., Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles, PLoS Biology, Volume 4, Issue 5, May 2006

Harnad, S., et al., The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access: An Update, Serials Review, Vol. 34, No. 1, March 2008, 36-40

Also highly cited (100+ cites)

Hajjem, C., et al., Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact, IEEE Data Eng. Bull., Vol. 28, No. 4, Dec. 2005

Brody, T., et al., Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact, JASIST, Vol. 57, No. 8, 2006

Piwowar, H. A., et al., Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate, PLoS ONE, March 21, 2007

Craig, I. D., et al., Do Open Access Articles Have Greater Citation Impact? A critical review of the literature, Journal of Informetrics, 1 (3), July 2007

Kurtz, M. J., et al., The Effect of Use and Access on Citations, Information Processing and Management, 41 (6), Dec. 2005

Davis, P.M., et al., Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial, BMJ, 337:a568, 31 July 2008

Gargouri, Y., et al., Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research, PLOS ONE, 5(10): e13636, October 18, 2010