The excellent Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative examined 420m citation links for 19m outputs to discover where citers are

“We found a robust association between open access and increased diversity of citation sources by institutions, countries, subregions, regions, and fields of research, across outputs with both high and medium-low citation counts,” a COKI team reports*

In particular , “we see an increase in citations to OA outputs from traditionally under-represented institutions based in subregions with fewer research … this is consistent with greater access to OA being linked to greater use of OA outputs from these subregions, at least as measured by citations,” they add.

And it matters where OA outputs originate, with a “stronger effect” for research available via discipline/institutional repositories than OA on publisher platforms.

COKI concludes their analysis “provides new evidence at global scale of the benefits of open access as a mechanism for widening the use of research and increasing the diversity of the communities that benefit from it.”

* Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang, Cameron Neylon, Lucy Montgomery, Rebecca N Handcock and Katie Wilson, “Open Access Research Outputs Receive More Diverse Citations,” Zenodo (September 15 ) HERE