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Publish Journal Articles Open Access: Benefits

This guide contains information relevant to staff and students wanting to publish their journal articles Open Access.

open access unlocked padlock symbolOpen Access is the principle that published research findings should be freely accessible to everyone and re-usable.

Since the 1990s growing numbers of academics, research organisations, funders and some publishers have been campaigning for, and promoting access to, research through Open Access journals and publications repositories. The UK Research Councils adopted an Open Access policy for its funded researchers in 2013.

Open Access has considerably challenged the pay-to-view subscription journal model.

Open Access is also part of University of Reading's Open Research strategy to ensure that the University's research is as open as possible, as early as possible. 

Benefits of Open Access

There are many benefits to making your work available Open Access.

  • Making your work freely accessible means that it can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. This means that readers who might otherwise be unable to pay for access to research have the opportunity to read your work - including policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in developing countries.
  • If you make your work available under a Creative Commons licence, this grants potential readers reuse rights, which can make it easier for others to build upon your work and increases its impact.
  • It ensures compliance with the policies of many research funders. In particular, it ensures that publicly funded research is accessible to the taxpayer.
  • It provides more exposure for your work, and there is a good body of evidence to suggest that it increases the number of citations your work may receive. Open access articles are still subject to proper attribution.

Open Access at University of Reading

The growth of gold Open Access at the University of Reading

A graph showing the growth of open access at University of Reading. In 2014 only 20% of articles were published OA. In 2023 it was almost 70%.

The number of journal articles published as Open Access at University of Reading has grown considerably over the last 10 years. The percentage of articles published Open Access has grown from 24% in 2014 to 65% in 2023. Data shown in the graph are from SciVal/Scopus. Data for 2024 are up to 6 September 2024. 

Benefits of Open Access

An infographic detailing some of the benefits of open access. It shows the gold open access logo (a gold, open padlock) surrounded by the benefits. Clockwise, these are: more exposure for your work, practitioners can apply your findings, higher citation rates, your research can influence policy, the public can access your findings, compliant with grant rules taxpayers get value for money, and researchers in developing countries can see your work. The infographic is copyright Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown, and is licenced under a CC BY licence.

What is Open Access?

This video from the Research Engagement team's talks for Open Access Week 2022 includes some discussion of the benefits of Open Access.