The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

TLDR

The access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all potential users, limiting research impact, and there are two routes to open access: publishing in an OA journal (gold) or self‑archiving in an OA archive (green). The authors propose that all articles should be made open access, requiring mandates from employers and funders to enforce self‑archiving and university implementation. The mechanism involves mandating self‑archiving by researchers' employers and funders, with universities implementing the mandate, as recommended by the UK and US. OA articles receive significantly higher citation impact than non‑OA articles, yet despite over 90% of journals permitting self‑archiving, only about 10–20% of articles are actually self‑archived.

Abstract

AbstractAbstractThe research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles Open Access (OA; i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). Only 5% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10â–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers' employers and funders, as the United Kingdom and the United States have recently recommended, and universities need to implement that mandate.