Benefits of publishing open access
Why publish open access?
Make your work available to everyone – publishing your work with Gold open access (OA) means that anyone, anywhere, can access your work. This wide audience leads to significantly higher usage and breaks down barriers to knowledge worldwide. Articles published in Bristol University Press and Policy Press’ hybrid journals get over six times more downloads than articles behind the paywall.*
Go beyond disciplinary boundaries – OA publishing doesn’t just make your work available to scholars. It is also available to policy makers, practitioners, educators and the general public. Increasing access to your work will lead to greater opportunities for real-world impact.
Greater impact – Research shows that OA papers published in hybrid journals are more likely to be cited than articles available only to subscribers. OA papers published in our hybrid journals are 70% more likely to be cited**.
Making your work available to a wider and more diverse pool of authors doesn’t just increase the likelihood that it will be cited; OA articles are also more likely to be talked about online. The average Altmetric attention score is 42% higher for our OA papers.
Being able to demonstrate the impact of your work in academia and beyond may help you secure more funding in the future.
Comply with funder mandates - Many research funders have an OA requirement as part of the terms and conditions of their research funding.
Why publish open access with us?
Discoverability and accessibility
- All our open access titles are indexed by the relevant Abstracting & Indexing services, including the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB);
- They are hosted on a variety of digital platforms, including the OAPEN Library, EBSCO and JSTOR;
- Bristol University Press open access books have a truly global reach with many countries accessing our open access books content;
- All books receive comprehensive content marketing carried out by our dedicated sales and marketing team to ensure your research is accessed by a global readership;
- All open access titles are preserved in Portico (via open access platform partners JSTOR and OAPEN).
Expert support and guidance
- Our publishing commitment puts authors and readers at the heart of what we do, and our author service is central to the way we work;
- Our in-house editorial team will ensure your research gets the expert attention to detail it deserves while coordinating a smooth and efficient path to publication undergoing our consistently high editorial and production workflow processes;
- Quality is paramount at Bristol University Press, and open access titles go through exactly the same editorial processes as all our books. Working with a trusted team of copy editors and peer reviewers we ensure high editorial standards with a rigorous two-stage peer review and highly regarded author-focused production process.
Publishing with integrity and confidence
- All open access books are published under a Creative Commons license. Our recommended licence is CC-BY-NC-ND but all other Creative Commons’ licences are available on request and we comply with all funder requirements;
- All BUP authors retain full copyright of their open access books;
- Flexibility in digital format - all BUP open access books are published in ePub and ePDF format.
*Usage recorded 1 Jan - 31 December 2023 for articles published 2019 - 2023.
**All time citations for papers published 2019 - 2023. Data was exported from Dimensions on 11 March 2024.
***All time Almetric attention scores for papers published 2019 - 2023. The data was exported from Altmetric on 11 March 2024.