The central idea behind Open Access is that the results of publicly financed research should be available to the public – citizens, SMEs, researchers at other institutions, medicine staff, journalists, teachers, …
Access to knowledge, information, and data is essential in higher education and research; and more generally, for sustained progress in society. Improved access is the basis for the transfer of knowledge (teaching), knowledge generation (research), and knowledge valorization (civil society).
Providing Open Access to research, both research papers and (the underlying) datasets, is not only beneficial for the public, but also for the researchers: several studies indicate that openness increases citations. Openness also improves reproducibility of your research results – and it might introduce new and perhaps unexpected audiences to your work.
For more information on Open Access, visit our dedicated page.
Useful information: The Open Access Citation Advantage