A new article has been published by 1Science discussing the reasearch impact of paywalled versus open access papers. Chuck Thomas, Executive Director, USMAI Library Consortium, summarized the findings from the article, including:
- Publishing in paywalled journals without green archiving is never an effective impact maximization strategy
- In total, and for all these fields, publishing in paywalled journals with no additional green archiving always yields below average citedness (the average being 1.0).
- Publishing in paywalled journals is the least impactful strategy overall, and the least impactful in 16 out of 22 fields.
- On average, open access papers produce a 50% higher research impact than strictly paywalled papers.
- In all these fields, fostering open access (without distinguishing between gold and green) is always a better research impact maximization strategy than relying on strictly paywalled papers.
- Having a green copy of a paper is the most impactful research communication strategy overall and the best strategy in 19 fields out of 22.
- Green is nearly always more effective than relying strictly on gold (20 out of 22 fields).
- Gold is the best strategy in biology and biomedical research and very close to green in clinical medicine (likely a reflection of the NIH and Wellcome Trust OA mandates).
- Gold has the least impact in six fields.
Click here to read the article.