In August 2015, downloads of the 17,700 articles deposited in the Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT topped 3.4 million, with over 100,000 downloads during the month – this was the third month where downloads exceeded 100K. These articles are deposited in accordance with the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

One student who downloads from these articles said: 

“I am a PhD student at a rather big university in Germany and even here we don’t have access to all relevant papers we need to produce relevant and impactful research. … If one imagines the situation at smaller universities or universities in less fortunate countries it is clear that the current publishing model is detrimental to the open spirit which underlies rigorous scientific advancement. I sincerely thank the MIT faculty for providing open access to their work and hope that open access will become the norm in scientific publishing.”

Other readers’ comments are available at the Scholarly Publishing website.

Among the top 10 most downloaded articles for the month of August 2015 were:

•  An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan, co-authored by four MIT-affiliated authors:  graduate student Sydney Do, Koki Ho, Samuel Schreiner, graduate student Andrew Owens, and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Olivier de Weck.
• Measurement of the inelastic proton–proton cross-section at √s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector, by MIT author Senior Research Scientist Frank E. Taylor and co-authors.
• DAEδALUS and dark matter detection, by MIT authors Yonatan Kahn, Professor Jesse Thaler, and Matthew Toups and c0-author.
• RoadRunner: Infrastructure-less Vehicular Congestion Control by MIT authors EECS graduate student Jason H. Gao and Professor Li-Shiuan Peh.

To view download statistics or visualize them on a global map, visit the Open Access Article Statistics site.

MIT authors may deposit a manuscript to the collection by logging in to DSpace@MIT.

This news is part of a series of monthly reports on activity related to the Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT, which was launched in October 2009 to house articles deposited in association with the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing, Copyright & Licensing, MIT Libraries