An Evidence-Based Inquiry into the Public Use of Open Access Research

"This conference paper is developed in part from my recently completed dissertation that applies empirical methods to develop insight into non-researcher use of open access.1 I am grateful for the opportunity to share the new knowledge gained from this project with the ACRL community gathered in Minneapolis. It is commonly understood that researcher use of information is measurable via citation analysis and other bibliometric methods common to scholarly discourse. Yet, much of the driving force behind the open access movement involves extending scholarly content to a wider public.2 Who precisely comprises these public users of OA? How do they use and benefit from access to this research? The work presented here applies quantitative and qualitative methods to shed more light on these questions. I discuss three objectives via this paper. First, I apply quantitative empirical methods to evaluate the impact of open access on the non-researcher public. Second, I aim to apply text analysis methods to discern motivations for the public to access scholarly information. Finally, I discuss strategies for open access repositories and institutions to increase the public impact of their platforms...."