Open Access for Authors, Researchers and their Institutions

Abstract

Open access - immediate and permanent free access - will transform the use and impact of published research results. Much of the emphasis has been on the clear benefits of open access for readers and users of this information. First, authors have to be persuaded to adapt and make their papers openly accessible. The benefits for authors and their institutions are significant, but have been given less attention. The talk will highlight examples that reveal motivations and incentives for authors to use open access: increased impact, the ability to link full experimental data with abbreviated published descriptions. Institutions share these interests with their authors, and are setting up institutional eprint archives to provide open access to these materials. If they adopt policies requiring authors to self-archive, institutions can then use these comprehensive archives to produce publication lists and other inputs for research assessment exercises on behalf of research funders. The School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University has done this, and the talk will consider how and why this has worked successfully.