
Issues in the field of open access
Benefits:
- Visibility - material is widely available free of charge. Increases dissemination and impact of research. Increases the profile of the author on a world-wide basis.
- Impact - there is evidence of enhanced citation rates for open access material. New bibliographic services are being developed to keep track of citations to papers in repositories.
- Research output can be easily retrieved via an internet search, whatever the format.
- Helps towards easing the rich/poor information-access divide.
- Although most research is publicly funded, the results are not generally available to members of the public. Several fund holders have therefore introduced a mandate to require, or strongly recommend that research output is deposited in an open access repository.
- Authors retain ownership of their content allowing them to reuse and repurpose their research for inclusion in websites, teaching material, presentations, databases and so on.
- Improves scholarly communication and collaboration opportunities.
- Material is securely archived with a stable internet address.
- Gives the author a central archive of work, useful for the REF.
- Open access may reduce delays in publication, depending on how the peer review process is implemented.