Authors gain by getting an audience for their work larger than any subscription journal can offer and increases its visibility and impact.

Readers gain barrier-free access to research material without library-imposed restrictions. OA published material is accessible from anywhere that a connection to the Internet is available via high-availability research tools such as Google and Entrez Pubmed, and this material is also freely applied to current and future indexing, mining, summarising, translating, querying, linking, recommending, alerting and aggregation tools, and other forms of data processing and analysis.

Teachers and their students gain free and equal access to content and negates the need for permissions to reproduce. Sharing material is simplified and free.

Libraries gain by avoiding budget restrictions and having to maintain publisher-imposed access policies. Librarians are able to enhance faculties’ access to research and thereby enhance their university’s research profile.

Universities gain by increasing the visibility of their faculty and reducing their subscription journal budget.

Funding agencies gain because OA publishing enhances the return on their research investment. Results of research are more widely accessible and more useful. Public funding agencies gain by tax-payers having access to publicly-funded research. Under conventional publishing, publishers are effectively given exclusive rights to profit from research paid for by tax payers.

As sources of research funding, governments also enjoy the benefits that funding agencies gain. OA also promotes the free sharing of information, a key characteristic of democratic governance.

All citizens gain by having access to peer-reviewed research which is generally not offered by public libraries. Access to such material provides citizens with a counter-point to questionable statements made in less credible sources. It also gives them access to research funded by their taxes. Under conventional publishing, publishers are effectively given exclusive rights to profit from research paid for by tax payers.