Why I published an open access book

“Publishing is about communication beyond academia.” – Prof. Owen Davies Prof. Owen Davies has been interested in open access for more than ten years, having personally experimented with creating and uploading his own PDF online. There was interest in the article, but because it hadn’t been peer reviewed and published, he found academics were less willing or able to cite it. Since then he has published open access articles and in 2017, he and co-author Dr. Francesca Matteoni published Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) as an open access book, funded by the Wellcome Trust. “I wanted my research to be easily accessible, easy for others to share, and for readers to download,” says Prof. Davies. In a 2017 white paper* published by Springer Nature, we found that publishing an open access book can lead to seven times more downloads, 50% more citations and ten times more online mentions, in comparison to a non-open access book. For Prof. Davies, his experience has certainly shown higher usage and downloads through 5,000 chapter downloads and 250 online mentions in less than a year, and he is reaching a wider audience too. In addition to Palgrave Macmillan’s marketing service, Prof. Davies also heavily uses Twitter to promote his research to reach others in and outside of academia. He frequently receives feedback that readers appreciate the open access nature of his book, as they...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Open Access Publishing open access books Source Type: blogs