Executive summary
This white paper explores the effect of different routes to OA on the reach and impact of articles in hybrid journals. The data shows that, 8 years on from our first major study into this topic, there is still a substantial advantage for gold OA articles across all disciplines (measured by downloads, citations and Altmetric Attention Score) over both non-OA articles and green OA articles. 4
The analysis of 204,781 articles published in 1,812 hybrid Springer Nature journals in 2023 also shows how gold OA can accelerate the number of downloads over time and the diversity of geographic readership, leading to faster impact and greater equity in access.
Taken together, these findings suggest that increased OA adoption has not eliminated measurable differences in how research is accessed, discovered and engaged with. This has important implications for those involved in the research process if they are to maximise the value of research for authors and for the scientific community.
Key findings
Across the data set as a whole, gold OA articles:
Deliver greater reach for researchers, with almost 7 times more downloads than non-OA content. Between publication in 2023 and the end of 2025, gold OA articles achieved 4,244 downloads on average compared to 611 for non-OA articles and 814 for green OA articles.
Deliver immediate impact for researchers with 3 times the number of downloads (average 917 per article) in the first three months of publication than non-OA articles receive across an entire year (average 320).
Support greater equity with increased access. Gold OA articles achieve 8.82 times higher downloads (882%) for LICs, and 7.24 times higher downloads (724%) for LMICs compared to non-OA articles, which is greater than the global average.
Provide greater visibility that translates into greater scholarly impact, with 50% more citations per article than both green OA and non-OA articles. Gold OA articles receive 1.5 times as many citations with an average of 10.74 citations per article, compared with just over 7 citations for green OA and non-OA articles.
Have greater social impact beyond academia with over 5 times higher an Altmetric Attention Score than non-OA articles. Whereas non-OA articles average an Altmetric Attention Score of 1.26 per article, green OA articles average 3.50, and gold OA articles average 6.47.
4 Lucraft et al. (2018). See #1
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