Newcastle University

For authors

Making research available open access greatly increases the readership, and ultimately, the impact of research. It is also often a condition of research funding - all but one of the UK Research Councils now insist that publications arising from their funding must be deposited in an open access repository as a condition of grant award. Many studies have demonstrated the beneficial impact of open access on research impact and citations - a detailed listing is available here. In some fields, open access has been shown to increase citations by up to 300%.

For higher education institutions

Most UK universities, including Newcastle, are developing open access databases of research produced by their staff. These services can act as research 'shop windows,' harnessing all the university's intellectual output in one place, which enhances their visibility and reputation.

For the research community in general

Making research available open access gets rid of the barriers which prevent researchers from accessing the material they need, and opens up research to new audiences. It is transforming scholarly communication, making the process faster, more flexible and ensuring a greater impact. However, this does not mean any reduction in quality - open access is an enhancement to, not a replacement for, the traditional peer-review publication process.

Want to know more?

• JISC Open Access - useful briefing paper, plus questions and answers.
• Open Access Now - campaigning for the freedom of research information, brings together lots of useful OA resources.
• The green and the gold roads to Open Access - useful summary of the current debate on open access.
• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) - a worldwide alliance of research institutions and libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly communications system.