Open Access
Recommended Readings
Books and Long Reads
Open Access by
A concise introduction to the basics of open access, describing what it is (and isn't) and showing that it is easy, fast, inexpensive, legal, and beneficial.The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work "open access"- digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue. In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber's influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.
Call number: Z286.O63 S83 2012eb OnlineISBN: 9780262517638Publication date: 2012-07-20
The Access Principle by
An argument for extending the circulation of knowledge with new publishing technologies considers scholarly, economic, philosophical, and practical issues. In The Access Principle, John Willinsky describes the latest chapter in this ongoing story - online open access publishing by scholarly journals - and makes a case for open access as a public good. The debate over open access, writes Willinsky, raises crucial questions about the place of scholarly work in a larger world - and about the future of knowledge.
Call number: Z286.O63 W55 2006ISBN: 0262232421Publication date: 2005-10-07
Open Access and the Humanities by
In this book, Martin Paul Eve sets out the histories, contexts and controversies for open access, specifically in the humanities. Broaching practical elements alongside economic histories, open licensing, monographs and funder policies, this book is a must-read for both those new to ideas about open-access scholarly communications and those with an already keen interest in the latest developments for the humanities.
Call number: Z286.O63 E94 2014ISBN: 9781107484016Publication date: 2014-11-27
- Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science Affordable education. Transparent science. Accessible scholarship. These ideals are slowly becoming a reality thanks to the open education, open science, and open access movements. Running separate—if parallel—courses, they all share a philosophy of equity, progress, and justice. This book shares the stories, motives, insights, and practical tips from global leaders in the open movement. This book is freely released under a CC-BY 4.0 license.
Recommended Articles and Blog Posts
- Pathways to Open AccessAn analysis of the various approaches to or models for achieving open access, and the actionable strategies that exist to implement each approach, prepared by the University of California Libraries.
- The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articlesPiwowar H, Priem J, Larivière V, Alperin JP, Matthias L, Norlander B, Farley A, West J, Haustein S. 2018. The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ 6:e4375 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375
- Understanding Open Access: when, why, & how to make your work openly accessibleAn in-depth overview from the Author's Alliance on open access and how to make your own work openly accessible
- A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter SuberA Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber is licensed CC-BY, and is one of the earliest and most succinct overviews of Open Access
- Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials CrisisKhoo, S. Y.-S. (2019). Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials Crisis. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries, 29(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10280
- Exploring the Hidden Impacts of Open Access Financing MechanismsExploring the Hidden Impacts of Open Access Financing Mechanisms - AAAS Survey on Scholarly Publication
Experiences & Perspectives - 2022 results - Implementing Open Access Policies Using Institutional RepositoriesDuranceau, Ellen Finnie, and Sue Kriegsman. 2013. Implementing open access policies using institutional repositories. In The institutional repository: Benefits and challenges, ed. Pamela Bluh and Cindy Hepfer, 75-97. Chicago: American Library Association.
- The Ascent of Open AccessDigital Science; Hook, Daniel; Hahnel, Mark; Calvert, Ian (2019). The Ascent of Open Access. Digital Science Report. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7618751.v2
This report is an analysis of the Open Access landscape since the turn of the millennium. It compares the leading countries for research outputs with those producing the most Open Access papers over a 16-year period, as well as Open Access collaboration trends.
Open Access Blogs and Resources
- Harvard Open Access Tracking ProjectThe Harvard Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) is a crowd-sourced project running on open source software to capture news and comment on open access to research in every academic field and region of the world.
- Open Access DirectoryThe Open Access Directory (OAD) is a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large.
- Scholarly KitchenA moderated and independent blog expressing various opinions on prominent issues in the area of scholarly communications, including topics related to open access.
Glossary of Terms
Article Processing Charge: A fee sometimes used for funding the publication of scholarly articles in an open access journal. The fee is often covered by a funding agency or the researcher's institution.
Author Rights: The rights retained by the author when entering a contractual agreement with the publisher. Open access encourages authors to negotiate with publishers to retain the rights to control the re-use and distribution of the work.
Bronze Open Access: These are articles that are free to read on a publisher's homepage, but without clarity on the specific licenses covering an article. Publishers sometimes make journal content publicly accessible on their websites for a limited period of time and then revert to allowing access only through subscription or paid access.
Creative Commons: A non-profit organization providing customized licenses which permit the author to retain selective rights and waive others for the re-use and re-mix of research.
Diamond (or Platinum) Open Access: These are journals that are completely free to publish and to read. The cost of maintaining and publishing the journal is usually borne by the organization that sponsors the journal. Diamond OA status has no impact on the journal's peer review process. By making articles completely free to both publish and to read, Diamond OA best approaches the goals of democratizing and widely distributing academic scholarship.
Embargo: A publication embargo is the duration between the work's publication and the time it is freely available. Justified by publishers in order to protect their revenue, an embargo limits access for a defined period of time (usually between 6 months to 2 years) to subscribers.
Gold Open Access: Research published in an open access journal that is immediately and openly available when published.
Green Open Access: Refers to self-archiving of published or pre-publication works for free public use. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional, general or disciplinary repository. The repository version provides the open access to the work.
Hybrid Open Access: Publishers make an individual article freely available after payment of an article processing charge, while still selling access through subscriptions.
Mining - Data/Text: The process of deriving information from machine-read material, such as using large quantities of data and text to extract information and recombining it to identify patterns.
Open Education: A transformative movement rooted in the principle of supporting high-quality education for all. Open Education Resources are openly licensed, online material designed for teaching and learning.
Open Science: Open Science is the practice of scholarship in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes, and other research processes are freely available under terms that enable reuse, redistribution, and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods.
Postprint: The accepted article after incorporating revisions and edits resulting from the peer review process The article does not include the pagination and type-setting of the publisher's print. Also known as final accepted manuscript or author accepted manuscript (AAM).
Preprint: The first draft of an article before peer review and the accompanying edits. Also known as the submitted version.
Public Access: A requirement for research outputs to be made freely accessible for all to read. Public access does not require that outputs be free of copyright or reuse permissions.
Publisher's Print (or Version of Record): The final published article in a publisher generated PDF file.
Repository - Institutional/Disciplinary: Institutional repositories are managed by a university or organization to curate the scholarly output of the institution's researchers. Disciplinary repositories, such as arXiv and PubMed Central, collect scholarship on specific subjects regardless of the researcher's institutional affiliation. General repositories, such as Zenodo, are available to anyone regardless of discipline or institutional affiliation.