What is Open Access?

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 BethesdaBerlin 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

Too much Text?

Watch a short video:

Creative Commons License
source: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Link to the original. Link to the creator.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *