Open Access: Who are the Ghost Readers?

Abstract: To develop a funding model for Open Access journal publication, it is necessary first to understand who benefits. This is a difficult task, because, in Open Access, no credentials are needed to read a journal article, and, thus, those people who access journal articles through Open Access leave no self-identification. We might call these readers "ghost readers". In this paper, I propose a method to learn the reading habits of the ghost readers. I explore this method using a database of downloads from the Open Access volumes of the Annual Reviews journals. I find that the habits of the ghost readers are very similar to those of academic readers from known institutions.