Between 2012 and 2014, I held a two-year Wellcome Trust Research Leave Award (WT096499AIA) for a project on women surgeons in Britain, 1860-1918. With the Trust’s commitment to open access, I knew from the outset that the work stemming from the Award would require publishing in this format. During the Award, I published an open access article on risk and responsibility in surgery in the Cambridge journal, Medical History, so had experience of how beneficial the process could be. This remains my most cited article, with global mentions ranging from South and North America, via Africa, Asia, and Europe. It’s been used by surgeons, as well as historians, when exploring surgical ethics.

With such a positive start, I approached Cambridge in 2015 about the monograph I’d written stemming from my Research Leave Award. After undergoing the usual review processes, the manuscript was accepted, and gold open access recommended. The resulting book, British Women Surgeons and their Patients, 1860-1918 was published in February 2017 and appeared as open access a month later. It went into paperback in November 2019, so the format didn’t prevent sales of actual copies. Six years after publication, it’s still being downloaded over 100 times a month, and has had nearly 13,000 full-text views so far. Cambridge’s metrics confirm that it’s been seen and commented upon worldwide via social media (Twitter/X) from America to Australasia. The demographic statistics also reflect a range of interested readers: the public (68%); scientists (11%); healthcare practitioners (10%); science communicators (10%). This means that my work is reaching not only those within my discipline, but the general public and those working in healthcare. Such visibility and impact brought my book to the attention of the Pascal Theatre Company, for example, with whom I have engaged collaboratively on their fantastic Heritage Lottery-funded community project, Women for Women in Nineteenth-Century Bloomsbury

As my involvement with open access publication was an early one in the Arts and Humanities, it has also helped to raise my profile in my own institution, the University of Leicester. The open access status of British Women Surgeons was specifically referred to in my School’s REF2021 Environment Statement as a ‘major outcome’ which ‘enhanced the quality, distinctiveness and visibility of research outputs’. Public events, at the Royal College of Physicians in November 2018, for example, where I spoke about activism, medicine and the fight for equality, were described as ‘interventions [which] have helped to make the general public and the medical profession more conscious of how women fought for equality and contributed to medical and surgical developments’.

When I was asked to speak at a recent UKRI webinar on longform open access, I realised just how anxious academic colleagues were about the prospect of needing to make their work public in this way. Concerns ranged from reduction in personal profit to loss of prestige, but I hope my experience shows the value of open access for individual scholars and institutions, as well as the importance of this format to the Arts and Humanities themselves. It’s more key than ever to ensure the survival and buoyancy of these disciplines, and open access can bring the work we do to ever wider and more appreciative audiences.