Impact of Social Sciences – To argue against open access on the grounds that it damages the reach of research is to undersell research.

"In publishing its report on open access journals in the humanities and social sciences yesterday, the British Academy reminds us that the open access debate has a continuing tendency to concern itself with questions of the applicability of open access innovations to particular disciplines. Openness will require some definition before we proceed. One definition of openness might be ‘for the many, not the few’, as typified by notions of the public good. Open access has a strong case on these terms alone, irrespective of how limited any public utility might seem to those producing esoteric literature. Another definition might include ideas of multiple party involvement, in contrast to single party ownership. From this perspective, open access creates the potential for new utopias of collaboration and co-creation of knowledge. Thirdly, openness might simply be defined as the opposite of a certain form of ‘closed-ness’, in which form, content, innovation, communication, benefit and critique are closely circumscribed and controlled by a guild of experts. Such closed-ness is typical of lay criticism of the academy as irrelevant ..."