On May 15th the VSNU, the association of universities in the Netherlands, kicked off a new Open Access awareness campaign titled 'Open Up to Open Access!' This to promote publishing open access among researchers. The genesis of this new campaign lies in the underutilisation of the Open Access options the VSNU negotiated for in the newly signed big deals, such as the ones with Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Elsevier. Many authors don't realise that they might be able to publish their articles in Open Access and have their article processing costs covered by deals already in place. To combat this situation, the VSNU created the Open Up to Open Access campaign.

You might wonder why an Open Access post on a blog mostly focused on impact, altmetrics, and social media? That's an easy question to answer; there is plenty of evidence that there is a correlation between open access publishing and an increased citation impact.¹ Not to mention to increased reach your work will have as it will be more easily accessible for those whose libraries don't provide access. As such, any author interested in increasing their impact and reach should consider the options Open Access offers.

If you want to discover more about Open Access at Leiden University, you can find more information about policies, agreements, and support on the University Libraries website's Open Access section. If you'd like to discuss the best strategies and options to publish your work open access, please contact our Digital Scholarship Librarian, Michelle van den Berk.

1

Swan, Alma (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date s.n.
Craig, I. D., Plume, A. M., McVeigh, M. E., Pringle, J., & Amin, M. (2007). Do open access articles have greater citation impact?: a critical review of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 1(3), 239-248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2007.04.001