In the four years since the MIT Faculty adopted their Open Access Policy, the collection housing their open access articles has shown steady growth, and recently topped 10,000 papers.

These papers are not simply stored and counted, however. They are read by grateful readers from all around the world. The stories are as varied as they are moving and compelling: the fifth grader acquiring a new insight about planet composition; the high school debater preparing for a competition; the faculty member in the Baltic trying to get quality information to students; the business person working on clean energy; the reader in India frustrated by paywalls. While each story is unique, in other ways each person tells the same tale — each is a productive reader of MIT research who would otherwise have done without, to the detriment of us all.

This information is being shared in celebration of International Open Access Week.

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