Open for all: exploring the reach of open access content to non-academic audiences

This white paper summarises findings from a joint project between Springer Nature, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) and the Dutch University Libraries and the National Library consortium (UKB), exploring how research content is being used outside of academia. It draws together findings from a bibliometric analysis of nearly 360,000 documents published in 2017 (book chapters, journal documents and proceedings), and a survey of nearly 6,000 readers on Springer Nature websites, putting a spotlight on the potential impact of immediate Gold OA publishing on societal impact: who uses research content where this relates to the SDGs, and for what purpose? Our results show a strong OA advantage, with a high volume of readers from non-academic communities.