Harvard University has been running an open-access repository for many years. It’s called DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard).
Today they’re launching Your Story Matters, a collection of many hundreds of short testimonials of how free access to Harvard researchers’ publications has helped state legislators, TV producers, community-college lecturers, preachers, high-school teachers, parents of autistic children, dieticians and many, many others do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively.
As Peter Suber says:
These stories volunteered by the users of our open-access repository are the best evidence that OA serves real people with real needs, that OA meets unmet demand, that the demand unmet by conventional journals includes academic and non-academic readers.
It’s great that this site is now online, helping us to appreciate some of the vast opportunity cost of keeping research locked behind paywalls.
Who needs access? You need access! 