In early 2005 Professor Ray Frost began uploading postprint versions of his journal articles to QUT ePrints. When he saw how frequently they were being accessed, he uploaded some of his older publications (from 2000-2004) and now has over 350 of his publications in the repository. Professor Frost says he has found that it actually saves him time as it only takes him around 5 minutes to upload each paper and he now has far fewer emails requesting free copies of his work.
However, the best return on his investment (of time) has been the phenomenal growth in his citation rate since 2005 (as indicated in Web of Science). Ray Frost is convinced that the dramatic increase in his citation rate is due to the open access copies of his papers that now supplement the journal versions. Since 2005, the postprint versions of his articles have been downloaded over 174,000 times; including 115,866 downloads in the last 12 months. ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
