Librarian
What is Open Access?
“By 'open access' to the literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."
The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
- Open Access Timeline Explore the history and development of Open Access.
- Open Access Explained (Video) What is open access? Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about.
Open Acces (OA) vs Open Educational Resources (OER)
OA and OER are cousins and share the fact that they are openly available to make sharing knowledge easier.. However, while being closely related, they were created for different purposes. OA are created to provide open access to resources (mainly for scholars and researchers) but do not address copyright. OER are resource used for educational purposes and are licensed with a creative commons license or are in the public domain.
Levels of Openness
Green vs. Gold
Green Open Access refers to an author sharing their own work, commonly via an institutional repository or OA website, after publishing in a traditional outlet. Sometimes only a pre-print version may be shared, or there may be an embargo period before the author can share the accepted manuscript.
Gold Open Access is when the published version of an article is available, without restrictions, to the public. Some journals are entirely Gold OA, others are blended Gold/Green, and some have contracts that allow Green OA.
- How Open Is It? A Guide for Evaluating the Openness of Journals Created by SPARC in conjunction with PLOS and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), the HowOpenIsIt? Open Access Guide standardizes Open Access terminology in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource.
Organizations Advancing Open Access
- SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition SPARC is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries through the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education.
- SHERPA A UK-based service providing information on publisher's copyright & archiving policies (RoMEO), research funders archiving mandates and guidelines (JULIET), and a directory of open access repositories (OpenDOAR).
- PLOS - Public Library of Science PLOS was founded as a nonprofit Open Access publisher, innovator and advocacy organization with a mission to advance progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
- OA 2020 A global alliance committed to accelerating the transition to open access.
- OASPA - Open Access Scholarly Publishers Assocaiation OASPA works to support the transition to a world in which open access becomes the predominant model of publication for scholarly outputs.
- Berlin Declaration on Open Access Written in October 2003, a milestone of the OA movement.
- ACRL - Association of College & Research Libraries In 2016, ACRL adopted a policy recommending that academic librarians publish in open access venues.