The Road to Open Access: Reciprocity
Researchers share a common stake with their own Institutions (not their disciplines) in maximizing their joint research impact and a reciprocal stake in access to one another's (give-away) research output.
Limited Access, Limited Impact
Under the current toll-access model of research dissemination, research publications can only be seen by the few people who subscribe to the journal that it was published in (or attend the conference it was presented at). This limitation of toll-access research inevitably means that the impact of the research — its ability to influence other researchers and generate citations — is throttled.
By participating in an open access model of research dissemination and self-archiving the pre- and post-print versions of research publications, the community gains access to the results of the research, the individual researcher achieves increased impact and the host institution gains recognition.
Maximised Research Access and Impact Through Self-Archiving