Open Access books shown to reach larger and more globally distributed audience leading to greater equity & higher citation rates

One of the core tenets of making all research openly available is that it enables more people to benefit from the work. That means they can find the work, they can use, reuse, and build upon it. In looking for such evidence for books, we set out to better understand the geographic distribution of usage for scholarly monographs published immediately open access (OA); can we see that OA books are read more than non-OA titles, and where does that readership come from? Does opening access to books extend their reach and impact to those readers who would not otherwise have had access to scholarly monographs?

Mithu Lucraft
March 3rd, 2021
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/03/03/open-access-to-academic-books-creates-larger-more-diverse-and-more-equitable-readerships/

The largest collaborative study of its kind to date found that Open Access books are downloaded on average 10 times more, across a greater portion of the globe, than their pay-walled competitors, and achieve significantly greater scholarly impact.

To read Mithu Lucraft’s summary of the study and it’s wider potential impact, please go to her post at the LSE Blog.