A new study from Taylor & Francis shows that the effect of open access (OA) publication on eBook usage is even greater than previous studies have shown.

We are pleased to bring you new research, undertaken by Amy Welmers, Content Development Manager, and led by James Watson, Open Access Books Lead. This research examines the impact of born and retrospective open access book publication on eBook usage.

The goal for this analysis at Taylor & Francis was to further our understanding of the impact of publishing a title "born OA" (gold open access from the point of publication) has on the usage of the eBook version via taylorfrancis.com, the Taylor & Francis eBooks platform, compared with similar non-OA titles.

Secondarily, the team was interested in measuring the difference in usage of titles that had become OA retrospectively, in comparison with similar non-OA titles.

In addition, they drilled down further into whether and how these findings may vary by text type, subject division, and conversion date.

OA titles see significantly higher usage than non-OA

Virtually without exception, the OA titles in the dataset on average see significantly higher usage than their non-OA counterparts (via taylorfrancis.com). This is particularly evident for born OA titles, which on average see 14 times as many views and downloads as non-OA titles (in the first 12 months after publication).

It is also true to a lesser degree for titles retrospectively converted to OA, which on average see three times as many views and downloads as non-OA titles (in the first four years after publication).

Welmers says: "It would be interesting to analyze this over a longer period to see how much they might close the gap, but I suspect the initial buzz around publication and currency of the content gives born OA books a substantial head start."

Scope and methodology

The dataset used for the born open access research was comprised of 390 Taylor & Francis titles published in either 2020 or 2021, of which 99 were born open access, and 291 were non-OA. Publishing gold OA means that the final published version of a book or book chapter is permanently and freely available online for anyone, anywhere, to read.

For their methodology, they matched the majority of the OA titles in their sample with three non-OA titles from the same subject area. Text type and publication dates were matched as closely as possible to those of the OA titles. In some cases, fewer than three non-OA titles were matched with the respective OA title, due to the availability of titles from the same list and text type within a reasonable time frame.

The retrospective open access dataset was comprised of 168 titles published in 2019, of which 42 were retrospectively converted to OA after publication and 126 were non-OA.

The team's analysis investigates usage in the first 12 months after publication for titles in the born OA dataset and in the first four years after publication for titles in the retrospective OA dataset. Usage data for this analysis was sourced from an internal report, and includes only figures for recorded eBook usage via taylorfrancis.com, not via any third party platforms.

The team was able to drill down on multiple text types within the datasets, including research and reference titles, teaching and learning titles, and professional titles.

Two reasons why this research is significant

This research shows an even greater increase in usage for OA titles than previous reports. For example, an oft-cited 2020 report entitled "Diversifying readership through open access" stated that OA books see 10 times as many downloads as non-OA books.

In addition, the Taylor & Francis study looks at the figures for both born OA titles and titles retrospectively converted to OA. This is an option that Taylor & Francis offers that many other publishers don’t, hence most other reports cannot cover this in their analysis. The dataset for this research also included multiple different text types and subject areas across HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences) and STEM.

The effect of subject on OA usage was another outcome that Welmers and the team hoped to discover using the data. To allow for a more meaningful comparison between subject areas, they drilled down specifically into the findings for monographs, as they are the largest text type category for OA.

Their results found that the difference in usage for OA monographs compared with non-OA monographs is relatively consistent in scale across subject areas for Social Sciences, Humanities and Media Arts, Behavioral Science and Education, and Engineering, with no significant differences among these subject areas.

This indicates that the impact of born OA publication for monographs is not affected by subject area, at least across the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). Further research will be required to better understand the impact on STEM titles, as there were no Science monographs in this sample, and the number of Engineering monographs is very small.

OA pathways for HSS

While an increasing number of research funding institutions are making funding available for open access books publishing, HSS researchers often find it harder to publish OA journal articles, having less OA funding than their peers in STEM.

At Taylor & Francis, we've developed different pathways for HSS researchers to publish OA. The Taylor & Francis and Jisc transformative agreement has seen a six-fold increase in articles published OA by HSS researchers. We’ve also launched Pledge to Open, a collaborative funding open access books initiative. Centered on collections inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Pledge to Open Pilot 2023/24 has so far enabled 26 books to be published open access.

Taylor & Francis has published more than 2,200 OA books since we launched our Open Access Books Program in 2013.

Last year, to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we investigated the impact that OA has on citations. Using data from Altmetric, we found that OA books are more likely than non-OA books to have been mentioned in the news media; a typical OA book from our collection has more than double the number of citations.

In addition, many of our OA books perform even better. The OA book The Psychology of Fake News has received around 32 times more citations than the average for publications in the same field.

Taylor & Francis is one of the top producers of OA books content worldwide. Each library is able to integrate our OA book content into their catalogs free of charge if they have a Taylor & Francis eBooks subscription. Learn more about OA books.