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Before examining the issues that OA now faces, it is worth considering why it has seen such positive uptake. The arguments for open access fall broadly into two camps, which reflect those of the free and open source movements – i­t is an effective mode of operation, and it has a strong ethical basis.

It can be seen as effective from the perspective of the author who wants their work to be as widely read and cited as possible. It would seem logical that articles which are published without any access restrictions would receive greater attention than those published in proprietary databases, which need to be accessed through libraries (or purchased on an article by article basis). From the web 2.0 influence on open education, we know there is an expectation that content will be free, and so any reader encountering an article that requires payment will simply look elsewhere. Social media can also be seen to impose an open access pressure on articles. In order for resources to be shared effectively via Twitter or other means, the article has to be openly available. It is of little use sharing a link to an interesting article if it then requires others to pay US$50 to access it.

Even if the majority of readers are academics, their host institutions may not always have access to that particular journal. Since 2001 (Lawrence 2001) there has been a growing body of evidence that openly available articles have higher downloads and citations than those in proprietary databases, as Gargouri et al. (2010) summarise: ‘This “OA Impact Advantage” has been found in all fields analyzed so ­far – ­physical, technological, biological and social sciences, and humanities’. The Open Citation Project (2013) has a comprehensive bibliography of studies that demonstrate this effect. Some studies report that citations are not increased, but the number of downloads are, often by substantial percentages, for instance Davis et al. (2008) found 89% more ­full-​­text downloads for open access articles.