Foreword 

By Katharine Szamuely, Vice President, Open Access

Building on the foundations of our white papers Assessing the open access effect for hybrid journals (2018)¹ and Going for gold: exploring the reach and impact of gold open access articles in hybrid journals (2021)², this new study explores the critical question: as open access (OA) has scaled, diversified, and become embedded, do the advantages associated with gold OA persist compared to other forms, or has the growing adoption led to a normalisation of outcomes?

The findings of From Access to Impact provide a clear answer: even within a more mature OA ecosystem, gold OA continues to be associated with greater reach and a stronger impact compared to non-OA and green OA articles. These effects are visible not only through downloads, citations and attention metrics, but also through a broader and more geographically diverse readership, including increased engagement in low- and lower-middle-income countries (LICs and LMICs).

Access alone is not the end goal, rather increasing the impact of research to further knowledge, policy, and practice.

In addition, gold OA enhances dissemination and impact, by providing researchers with immediate access, further strengthening the OA advantage. This increase in real-world impact has also been observed in the Springer Nature and Overton report From publications to policy: The impact of research towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (2025).³

These insights point to a deeper and up-to-date understanding of the value of gold OA. Access alone is not the end goal, rather increasing the impact of research to further knowledge, policy, and practice.

For research to deliver its greatest possible value to researchers and society, continued collaboration across the scholarly communications ecosystem is essential. Governments, funders, policymakers, institutions, academic libraries, and publishers all have a role to play in supporting models that maximise the visibility, accessibility, and use of research while respecting author choice. This includes sustained investment in the integrity, quality, and discoverability of the version of record (VOR), ensuring that trustworthy research can be easily found, shared, and applied to address real-world challenges.

Following From Access to Impact, the question before us is no longer whether gold OA delivers value, but how stakeholders across the ecosystem can work together to sustain and strengthen the conditions that enable research to create meaningful impact.