Maximize the Reach and Impact of Your Work

Traditional publishing imposes price and permission barriers on some portion of the audience that could read and be affected by your scholarship. Maximizing access to your work will maximize its impact.

Remove Restrictions on Access to your Work

If you retain important copyrights in your work and use one of the alternative forms of publishing that do not place restrictions on access, you enlarge your audience, increase the sharing of knowledge, and accelerate research.

Increase Others’ Use of Your Work

If you retain important copyrights in your work, you can grant non-exclusive rights to others to use your work in their research and teaching. If you have published your work in an alternative form, for example, in an open access journal or in eScholarship, your audience will get immediate, cost-free access to your work.

There is evidence that unrestricted access increases research citations, an important measure of impact. See: The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies from the Open Citation Project (includes summaries and links to articles and studies).

More Information

• Framing the issue — open access [PDF]: From the Association of Research Libraries, May 2004.
• Resources at the University of California: Includes links to UC campus resources and other organizations addressing issues in scholarly communication.