Open access academic books downloaded, discussed and cited far more than traditional books

A report from Springer Nature launched today shows there is a tangible benefit to publishing academic books using immediate, or ‘gold’, open access (OA) models.  The research found that such books are: Downloaded seven times more: On average, there are just under 30,000 chapter downloads per OA book within the first year of publication, which is 7 times more than for the average non-OA book. Cited 50% more: Citations are on average 50% higher for OA books than for non-OA books, over a four-year period. Mentioned online ten times more: OA books receive an average of 10 times more online mentions than non-OA books, over a three-year period. As a pioneer of open research, Springer Nature is in a unique position to analyse the real effect of open access on books. Early to introduce open access options across monographs and shorter mid-form research such as Palgrave Pivot and SpringerBriefs, as of October 2017 Springer Nature has published more than 400 open access books on SpringerLink. Carrie Calder, Business Development & Policy Director at Springer Nature said: “Our report goes further than previous research by presenting the first major comparative analysis of usage data. Now for the first time, we can show that the ‘open access effect’ is real for books.” She adds: “We see the rise of open research, across books and data as well as journal articles, as important to advancing discovery, but the landscape for open access books is still evolving, with funde...
Source: News from STM - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Featured Open Access Source Type: news