LibGuides: Scholarly Communication: OPEN ACCESS

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. Through licensing via an open license (usually a Creative Commons License), freely available outputs can also be legally shared and reused. Hence, open access is more than just free access.

The original definitions of open access were first proposed in Budapest in 2002, Berlin in 2003 and Bethesda in 2003.

SOURCE: Open Access Australasia

Different types of Open Access

Repository-based or “Green” Open Access

“Green” open access is the term used when the author accepted version of a published work is deposited into a subject-based repository or institutional repository. Articles may have a Creative Commons License applied, which specifies how the article can be used

Journal-based or “Gold” Open Access

“Gold” open access refers to publishing in a fully open access scholarly journal, one where the publisher of the journal provides free and immediate online access to the full content of the journal and the final published versions of articles in that journal are fully open access. Articles have a Creative Commons License applied, which specifies how the article can be used. In some cases, the publisher charges an article processing charge (APC), which may be paid by the author’s institution or funding body or by an individual researcher. A comprehensive list of open access journals is maintained by the Directory of Open Access Journals. There is also a Directory of Open Access Books.

“Diamond” Open Access

“Diamond” open access refers to open access journals that are free for readers to access and for authors to publish in. These journals are often community-driven and supported by institutions or by national or regional infrastructure.

“Hybrid” Open Access

"Hybrid" open access refers to when an article processing charge is paid for an individual journal article to be made open access in an otherwise subscription journal. This type of open access always has an Article Processing Charge (APC) associated with it.

SOURCE: Open Access Australasia

Open Access and UN Sustainable Development Goals

Access to information, and libraries as institutions that deliver it, are key to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is clearly pointed out under target 10 in SDG 16 “Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”, but it is true for many other SDGs and their respective targets.

What are the benefits of Open Access?

OA Resources

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, peer-review, OA journals.

DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) is a digital directory of peer-reviewed OA books and OA book publishers

DOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) is an authoritative directory of academic OA repositories.

SHERPA/RoMEO provides information on publishers' conditions for OA archiving, on a journal-by-journal basis.

SHERPA/Juliet provides access to information on funders' policies and requirements on OA publication and data archiving.

How Can I Share It? contains information on publisher guidelines, and a tool that allows you to enter the DOI of an article and then advises where and how the article can be shared.

How Open Is It? enables users to compare and contrast publications and policies to determine how 'open' a publisher and/or publication is.

Unpaywall is a browser extension available for Chrome and Firefox that provides access to over 25 million research papers for free, by harvesting OA content from sources such as institutional repositories.