Six myths about open access were addressed in an open research workshop at the 2015 Naturejobs Career Expo in London.

Guest contributor Gaia Donati

{credit}Image credit: Gaia Donati{/credit}

How open-minded do you feel about open access publishing?

The Open Research workshop at the 2015 London Naturejobs Career Expo, led by Mithu Lucraft (head of Open Research Marketing at NPG) and Ros Pyne (Research and Development manager of the Open Research Group at Springer Nature, who manage the Open Research portal), explored several myths about open access publishing, now a well-established alternative route to disseminating scientific results.

Myth 1: Open access benefits readers, but not authors

Open access is great for readers, but the advantage for researchers may seem less obvious at first. A study of open access and subscription-only PNAS articles found that earlier, more frequent citations characterize the former category when compared with the latter. A more recent study of the citations for papers published in Nature Communications (before it became fully open access) seems to confirm these findings and extends the observations to downloads and social-media interest, with open access articles experiencing higher downloads. Interestingly, these also appear to be sustained over a longer period of time – “attention lasts longer,” said Lucraft. In this way, open access – together with similar initiatives such as open data – may well be a primary route to accelerate and facilitate science while ensuring reproducibility. Continue reading →