There are a growing number of reasons to consider publishing your research open access. These include:
Openly accessible journal articles are available to anyone, at any time. This higher visibility and accessibility means that more readers can view the work, and the work can be cited more. The increase in citations can lead to further career and funding opportunities.
Faster and wider public access gives organisations or individuals access to research outputs that they may not have previously been able to afford. Higher readership can also increase wider public engagement and collaboration opportunities.
With more exposure, research can have a greater impact beyond the publishing institution, practitioners and policy developers.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) require that the outputs of publicly funded research are made available to the public as soon as possible. This means that publications made possible, even in part, by NHMRC or ARC grant funding are made available via an Institutional Repository (IR) within 12 months of the date of publication.
The current commercial publication model, at it's most basic, sees authors pay to have their research published in a journal. Libraries then pay an ongoing subscription cost to provide access to these articles. These subscription costs are high, and a barrier to access for many, and in some cases the publishers are "paid twice": once for the submission of the article and again for access. Publishers argue that there is a cost associated with the processing and publication of work and other service fees.
The following article explains these issues: Ma, L. (2023). The Platformisation of Scholarly Information and How to Fight It. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries, 33(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.13561
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