With the rise of Wikipedia as a first‐stop source for scientific information, it is important to understand whether Wikipedia draws upon the research that scientists value most. Here we identify the 250 most heavily used journals in each of 26 research fields (4,721 journals, 19.4M articles) indexed by the Scopus database, and test whether topic, academic status, and accessibility make articles from these journals more or less likely to be referenced on Wikipedia. We find that a journal's academic status (impact factor) and accessibility (open access policy) both strongly increase the probability of it being referenced on Wikipedia. Controlling for field and impact factor, the odds that an open access journal is referenced on the English Wikipedia are 47% higher compared to paywall journals. These findings provide evidence is that a major consequence of open access policies is to significantly amplify the diffusion of science, through an intermediary like Wikipedia, to a broad audience.