2004/01/01 by Stevan Harnad, Tim Brody, François Vallières +6 · 2 citations
Decision Sciences · Computer Science · #scientometrics and bibliometrics research #Research Data Management Practices #Academic Publishing and Open Access #Mandate #Publication #Citation #Impact factor #Citation impact #Political science #Business #Library science #World Wide Web #Computer science #Advertising #Law
paper · doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2004.09.013
openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The 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 10–20% 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.