Open Access (OA) is the free, immediate availability of research, learning materials, and other scholarly work in a digital environment. Open access exists because "research leads to breakthroughs, and communicating the results of research is what allows us to turn breakthroughs into better lives—to provide new treatments for disease, to implement solutions for challenges like global warming, and to build entire industries around what were once just ideas" (SPARC, n.d.).
When you hear the terms Open Educational Resources (OER), Creative Commons, Open Education, and similar terms, these terms all fall under the umbrella of Open Access.
You may decide that open access is the best route for resources used within your classroom or for publishing your own research. Open access:
The following video, An Introduction to Open Access Publishing by Taylor & Francis, explains Open Access:
Publishing models for Open Access journals and articles:
Gold and Green are the most common publishing models for OA. The following video, "Open Access: What's With All The Colors?" by UMN Libraries, explains additional differences between the two:
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.
Open Access by
Academic libraries routinely struggle to afford access to expensive journals, and patrons may not be able to obtain every scholarly paper they need. Is Open Access (OA) the answer?
Open access and the future of scholarly communication: policy and infrastructure by
This volume of Creating the 21st-Century Academic Library looks closely at issues of policy and infrastructure for libraries that wish to provide leadership on their campus in the transition to more open forms of scholarship. The authors discuss how to make the case for open access on campus, as well as the political and policy implications of libraries that themselves want to become publishing entities.
Knowledge Unbound by
Influential writings make the case for open access to research, explore its implications, and document the early struggles and successes of the open access movement. Peter Suber has been a leading advocate for open access since 2001 and has worked full time on issues of open access since 2003. As a professor of philosophy during the early days of the internet, he realized its power and potential as a medium for scholarship. As he writes now, "it was like an asteroid crash, fundamentally changing the environment, challenging dinosaurs to adapt, and challenging all of us to figure out whether we were dinosaurs." When Suber began putting his writings and course materials online for anyone to use for any purpose, he soon experienced the benefits of that wider exposure. In 2001, he started a newsletter--the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter, which later became the SPARC Open Access Newsletter--in which he explored the implications of open access for research and scholarship. This book offers a selection of some of Suber's most significant and influential writings on open access from 2002 to 2010. In these texts, Suber makes the case for open access to research; answers common questions, objections, and misunderstandings; analyzes policy issues; and documents the growth and evolution of open access during its most critical early decade.
Open Praxis, Open Access by
Many in the world of scholarship share the conviction that open access will be the engine of transformation leading to more culture, more research, more discovery, and more solutions to small and big problems. This collection brings together librarians, scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and thinkers to take measure of the open access movement. The editors meld critical essays, research, and case studies to offer an authoritative exploration of the concept of openness in scholarship, with an overview of how it is evolving in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia; open access publishing, including funding models and the future of library science journals; the state of institutional repositories; Open Educational Resources (OER) at universities and a consortium, in subject areas ranging from literary studies to textbooks; and open science, open data, and a pilot data catalog for raising the visibility of protected data.
The information presented in this guide is intended for information purposes only, and should not be construed as legal advice.
