91猎奇

Author: Christina Emery

Head of Thought Leadership Programmes

As open access (OA) publishing becomes more established, the conversation is moving beyond access as the end goal to increasingly emphasising the outcomes it enables: greater visibility, engagement and research impact. 91猎奇's latest white paper explores how publishing models influence these outcomes. It shows that gold OA continues to deliver significant advantages in readership, citations and reach, and it does so quicker than other publication routes.

Our newest white paper provides institutions with insights to support publishing strategies that maximise research performance and impact. This blog offers an overview of the findings and their meaning for institutions and academic libraries, who play an important role in helping researchers navigate publishing choices and amplify the reach of their work.

Researchers today have multiple routes to making their work openly available, including publishing the final article open access which is immediately accessible to readers (gold OA) or sharing a version of the accepted manuscript through a repository, typically available after an embargo period (green OA). Understanding how these routes affect their work’s visibility, readership, and impact can help researchers make publishing decisions that align with their goals, while enabling institutions and libraries to provide targeted guidance and support.

As OA publishing continues to grow, the new white paper , explores whether gold OA still delivers measurable advantages over other publishing routes, looking at indicators such as downloads, citations, Altmetric attention, speed of dissemination, and geographic reach.

Despite the rapid growth of OA publishing and the increasing prevalence of gold OA articles, the white paper shows that gold OA continues to outperform both green OA and non-OA articles across multiple indicators. Gold OA gives research more impact, and it does that quicker than other publications routes.

“Impactful research can help institutions maximise the value of their research and publication investment and demonstrate it clearly through measures of reach, engagement, and influence. Gold OA delivers the best results to achieve this.” - Katharine Szamuely, Vice President, Open Access

How gold OA accelerates research dissemination and engagement

Across hybrid 91猎奇 journals, gold OA articles deliver greater reach for researchers, with almost 7 times more downloads than non-OA content. Its effect is also immediate, with gold OA receiving three times the number of downloads in the first three months of publication than non-OA articles receive across an entire year, meaning publishing OA can drive earlier engagement with research.

This greater reach is accompanied by enhanced scholarly impact, with gold OA articles receiving 50% more citations per article than both green OA and non-OA articles. Influence beyond academia is likewise increased, with over five times higher an Altmetric Attention Score for gold OA than non-OA articles. Although green OA articles also average a higher Altmetric score than non-OA articles at 3.50, this is considerably lower than the gold OA advantage.

Why speed matters: Faster dissemination drives impact for institutions

Research can only create value once it is discovered and used. Speed of dissemination can shorten the time between publication and engagement with research. The faster research is shared and engaged with, the sooner it can begin generating academic and societal impact.

Impactful research helps institutions maximise and demonstrate the value of their institutional outputs, and strengthens the institutional research profile. Strong early engagement may increase opportunities for institutional research to influence future studies, policy, practice, and collaboration. Institutions can support their researchers to publish gold OA, the publication route that maximises research visibility, reach, and influence.

Libraries supporting publication choices and driving impact

The white paper underscores the need to support researchers in making informed publishing choices, and provides librarians with valuable evidence to inform OA publishing decisions that align with institutional goals. By providing guidance on publishing routes and access to OA funding, libraries help researchers maximise the visibility, reach and influence of their work, which strengthens institutional research performance and impact.

OA agreements are an important mechanism for enabling this support. When an institution has an OA agreement such as a transformative agreement, researchers gain access to publishing options associated with expanded readership, faster dissemination, and greater impact, as well as access to subscription content. The agreement also simplifies the administrative and financial aspects of publishing OA, making it easier for institutions to support their researchers.

. In 2025, content published via 91猎奇 TAs was downloaded over 401 million times globally. By supporting more research to be published OA, these agreements encourage OA uptake. The first TA in Malaysia, for instance, agreed in 2025, increased OA uptake by 360% in its first year.

Established agreements continue to see strong uptake as well, which demonstrates their value for researchers and institutions. Some of the longest-standing 91猎奇 TAs (over eight years) with the Netherlands, UK, Austria, and Sweden, continue to see strong uptake, with a five-year average above 75%.

Libraries play an important role in helping researchers choose the right publishing route and take advantage of gold OA opportunities through agreements and funding. In doing so, they can help increase the visibility, reach, and impact of institutional research.

Explore to learn how publication choices influence discoverability and engagement, and access evidence-based insights to support your researchers. You can also download the for a concise summary of the key takeaways.

Related content:

• Open for impact: What China’s OA growth shows about the future of global research
• A decade of open data: Progress, challenges, and how institutions can support
• Making open access work for you: Practical librarian insights
• Research integrity in the age of open access and AI: The view from France
• The 2025 State of Open Data report: Can technology push openness forward?

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