Journal article authors aren’t paid for their work — the rewards of publishing articles are largely reputational: improved visibility in the field, increased scholarly impact, etc. And you stand to gain more if your work is both publicly accessible and readily discoverable using tools that searchers commonly use (regular search engines, Google Scholar, Unpaywall, etc.). Putting your work into a repository (institutional or disciplinary) is a great way to ensure discoverability by these tools, especially if your work wasn’t originally published OA. Both Google and Google Scholar are top drivers of visitors to CUNY Academic Works.

Making your work OA helps you reach the widest possible audience, including teachers, healthcare workers, patients, journalists, policymakers, and learners of all sorts. In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated an “open access citation advantage,” showing that OA articles are cited more than paywalled articles, and with more geographic and disciplinary diversity.