What is Open Access?
- Unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed scholarly research
- Free of charge
- Free of most restrictions on use (though attribution is still a must)
- Defined by the Bethesda, Berlin and Budapest statements on open access publishing
What are the Benefits?
- Increases impact – studies have found that OA research has higher citation rates
- Increases the amount of accessible research – no more being locked out by paywalls
- Stimulates collaboration
- Unrestricted access to research, regardless of economic status or institutional affiliation
- Freedom to use and re-purpose research materials in new and interesting ways
- Enables access to the research that their taxes fund and encourages lifelong learning
- Allows independent researchers to access research
- Gives businesses and other organisations access to research and encourages innovation
How do you make your work openly accessible?
There are two routes to open access:
Gold Open Access
- Available immediately upon publication
- Available at the source of publication (usually the journal website)
- No charge at point of access for users
- Typically paid for with APCs (article processing charges) though there are other business models
- Typically made available under a Creative Commons licence
Green Open Access (or self-archiving)
- Subject to journal enforced embargo periods
- Available from a secondary source, such as a subject or institutional repository
- Author accepted manuscript rather than formatted publisher version deposited by authors themselves
- Check SHERPA/RoMEO for your journal’s Green OA policy
Article Processing Charges
- Fees charged to authors by journals to recover the costs of publication
- Average price around €1.200 but can vary between €0 and €4.000+
- Fees charged by hybrid journals tend to cost more than those charged by pure open access journals
Pure or Hybrid?
- Pure open access journals contain only work made openly accessible
- Hybrid journals contain a mix of both open access and subscription based content
- Some of these journals have been accused of “double dipping” as they are receiving income from both APCs and journal subscriptions
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