Free Online Content

In my blog today on the topic of free access to online materials I am specifically going to go down the road of scholarly articles and research publications. This is because this area is perhaps the most pertinent to us students and our lives in work.
When trying to access articles for my essays in other modules, I am often faced with the problem of paywalls or denied access due to not being in the field of research, this will undoubtedly become a problem in future years as my work becomes more research-based, and especially so for my dissertation.
This of course leads to the question as to why DO researches put paywalls up or deny access to anybody?
Perhaps publication fees are one reason, as it is often the responsibility of the author to cover the costs of the publication. Maybe it’s the fact that authors do this for security reasons and to help protect their content from being misrepresented. But these few negatives are consumed by the multiple benefits that authors receive from opening access to all.
By opening access, authors will be able to publish their work to much larger audiences and be able to have their work discussed by a wider group of people, both within their field of research and the rest of the world. This will lead to a more positive impact and better citation for the authors.

The picture above shows that articles with open access will lead to a greater number of citations compared to those without. It is not only the citations, but the authors can have a greater impact on their field of expertise by allowing more research with their provision of knowledge. This is shown by the graphs below.

This shows that it would massively beneficial for researchers to publish their work with open access both on their own lives as well as the field they work in.

References

Bo-Christer B. and Solomon D. (2012) Open Access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact

Eysenbach G. (2006) Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles

Wiley Open Access : Author Benefits

SPARC Open Access