Authors choose to publish open access for a variety of reasons:

• To meet your funder’s open access policy requirements. Many funding bodies require research conducted with their funding to be published open access and may also require research to be published under a particular Creative Commons license. To find out more, see our funding bodies and compliance page.
• Greater control over rights to distribute and re-use work. Under a Creative Commons license, authors retain more control over the rights to distribute and re-use their intellectual property. See the Creative Commons website for details of the terms of each available license.
• Leads to greater visibility and impact. Publishing your research open access means that more people can view and cite your work without barriers to access. 
• Allows the general public to access research. The taxpayer often pays for research, and the general public has a right to access this research.