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Scholarly Publication Workshop

Finding the Best Publication Option to Maximize Your Impact While Avoiding “Predatory Publishers”

What is Open Access?

What is Open Access

Open access is free, unrestricted access to high-quality research materials. Information is shared freely and free of charge by or to authors. Authors maintain copyright. Information is not found behind paywalls and typically free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

“By open access [OA], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them for any other lawful purpose…”. 

Budapest Open Access Initiative – Feb 14, 2002, http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/

In other words- royalty-free literature. Research that is available for free to the public in a way that is compatible and in compliance with peer-review, copyright, revenue, preservation, prestige, quality, career development, discovery and other factors no different than regular scholarly publication. The primary difference is that the bills are not paid for by readers and hence do not function as access barriers.

Open access Factsheet from SPARC

 

Types of OA Journal Models

Gold Open Access – The peer-reviewed journal is true Open Access.

  • The article (and Journal) will be universally accessible Immediate access.
  • No embargo period. 
  • Researchers often pay to publish their articles. Fees can be written into grants, paid for by the institution, or sometimes fees are waived/reduced. 
  • Publications fees differ greatly between Journals. Some Journals are not for profit (e.g., PLOS) others are for-profit (e.g., Biomed central). Traditional non-OA Journals often also as the author to pay a publishing fee.

Green Open Access - Article will be published in a traditional Journal, but pre-prints or post-prints may be archived in a repository 

  • The author needs to retain its copyright of their publication. In non-OA Journals, author's give their copyright over to the publisher 
  • There is usually a minimum, a 12-month embargo
  • Articles are scattered throughout the web and on a variety of repositories
  • Similar to Public Access Policies mandated by the U.S. Government​

Hybrid Open Access - Author pays to publish their articles as OA, in a non-OA Journal

  • Journal is subscription/non-OA based but an individual author can pay to have their article OA
  • Scattering of OA articles throughout a Journal
  • Libraries and authors both pay fees - Double-dipping or a transitional stage?

Benefits of OA

  • Provides readers with quicker, more direct access to research results
  • Research is equally accessible to all academics, not just those at the richest institutions
  • Researchers in low and middle-income countries will be able to keep up-to-date and be competitive with world-class research
  • Universities can't teach what they can't access. This gives everyone an educational leg-up
  • Increased visibility, impact, and citations - Increased access is positively correlated with the number of citations and an author’s impact
  • Ability to retain copyright of your work so can make it available via different routes and avenues. 
  • Available for data and text mining so researchers can find new purposes and directions for your work. 
  • Global reach - Improve knowledge circulation for everyone!
  • Accelerates the pace of research, discovery and innovation

Select OA Journal Directories