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Open Access

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) encompasses scholarly research that is published online and available free of charge. The OA movement helps remove barriers to access which enables greater visibility and more impact. 

 

Why does Open Access matter?

Open Access publication is beneficial to the researcher, reader and broader community for a variety of reasons:

Visibility: Freely available publications can reach more readers which can lead to more citations and greater impact. 

Accessibility: OA can help enable equity in the research landscape by removing the cost barrier. Researchers who may not have been able to pay the fees to access can now read the research.

Collaboration: With less restrictive copyright agreements and free, online access, OA can lead to multi-disciplinary researchers collaborating across the globe which can accelerate research.

Public Engagement: By opening publications to the broader community, the increased access can lead to actualized policies, programs and initiatives based on the research. 

Publishing Terminology to Know

  • Gold OA is when a publisher makes an article open access immediately upon publication in a journal. OA journals conduct peer review and often cover costs of operating through Article Processing Charges (APCs). For a list of OA journals in all fields and disciplines refer to the Directory of Open Access Journals. 
  • Green OA refers to the self-archiving process of adding preprints or post-prints to a repository. Repositories can be hosted by an institution, such as Clark's Digital Commons, or organized by subject, like arXiv for physics, or by funder, like PubMed.
  • Hybrid OA journals make some articles available through a subscription-based model but also publish some articles open access if authors pay an APC. 
  • Diamond or Platinum OA refers to journals that do not charge APCs to publish articles open access because they are fully funded by a non-profit organization or an university. 

Additional Publishing Resources

  • Creative Commons (CC) has six licenses that are recognized and often used with open access work. Learn more about the six types of Creative Commons licenses here. 
  • If you are looking for an open access journal to publish in, use the checklist and resources provided by Think. Check. Submit. to make sure you find a trusted publisher.

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