Maximizing and Measuring Research Impact Through University and Research-Funder Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates

No research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles that are made “Open Access,” (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only about 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual experience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication (2) the author’s final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository (IR). Only the depositing needs to be mandated; setting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or CA (Closed Access) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 62% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the embargoed 38%, all would-be users can have almost-immediate almost-OA to the deposited CA document by using the IR’s semi-automatised “email eprint request” button