From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 17:09:14 -0500

*January 24, 2024.  New study addresses long-standing debate about whether
free-to-read papers have increased reach*

For 2 decades, advocates of open access in scientific publishing have
offered a fundamental justification: Making papers immediately free for
anyone to read would speed the dissemination of findings and accelerate
research progress.

Now, after years of little conclusive evidence to support these assertions,
researchers report that open-access papers have a greater reach than
paywalled ones in two key ways: They attract more total citations, and
those citations come from scholars in a wider range of locations,
institutions, and fields of research. The study also reports a “citation
diversity advantage” for a controversial type of open-access article, those
deposited in “green” public repositories.

[SNIP]

But open access’ promise to widen the impact of articles isn’t reaped
equally worldwide by authors, the study found. The citation diversity
advantage was greatest for open-access papers published by researchers in
wealthy regions such as North America and Northern Europe, which already
receive large shares of all citations. Huang’s team says more research is
needed to explain this effect. Previous studies have found that wealth
inequalities across countries also influence whether authors can publish
open-access articles at all. Many in poor countries report that the fees
they must pay, which average about $2000 per article, are prohibitive—which
could be cutting them off from the advantages of open access reported by
Huang’s team.

More here:

https://www.science.org/content/article/open-access-papers-draw-more-citations-broader-readership