Benefits of open access to researchers from lower-income countries: A global analysis of reference patterns in 1980–2020

The main objective of the open access (OA) movement is to make scientific literature freely available to everyone. This may be of particular importance to researchers in lower-income countries, who often face barriers due to high subscription costs. In this article, we address this issue by analysing over time the reference lists of scientific publications around the world. Our study focuses on key issues, including whether researchers from lower-income countries reference fewer publications in their research and how this trend evolves over time. We also investigate whether researchers from lower-income countries rely more on the literature that is openly available through different OA routes compared with other researchers. Our study revealed that the proportion of OA references has increased over time for all publications and country groups. However, publications from lower-income countries have seen a higher growth rate of OA-based references, suggesting that the emergence of OA publishing has been particularly advantageous to researchers in these countries.