Open Access
Scholarly Communications Librarian
Make your Work Open
Open Access (OA) means that information is:
- freely available
- published digitally online
- has few restrictions on its use or reproduction
What are the origins of the OA movement?
- The OA movement is the result of a recent scholarly communication crisis, where the pricing model of academic journals became unsustainable for many educational institutions.
- That crisis, combined with the low cost of online publishing and distribution, led to a dramatic increase in OA publications.
Authors can make their works OA through several avenues:
- Self-Archive a copy of their work in a subject or institutional repository (Green OA). Scholar Works is CSUSB's institutional repository.
- Publish in a fully OA journal (Gold OA). These journals are not subscription-based, but instead, get financial support by asking authors to pay Article Processing Charges (APC), or are funded by scholarly associations or institutional funds.
- Publish in a Hybrid OA journal. These journals operate using a subscription-based model but do give authors an option to choose to pay an APC to make their work available open access.
Who Benefits from OA publication?
- Faculty: increased visibility and availability of work can lead to it having a greater impact.
- Students/Teachers: increased access to more information can enhance learning, especially in developing nations.
- Libraries: increased access to information for patrons, for less money than the subscription journal model costs.
- Universities: greater visibility of research outputs.
- General Public: greater access to information, especially to the results of publicly funded research.
How does this impact my grant-funded research?
In addition to giving researchers increased access to information, and making a researcher's own work more accessible, many funding bodies, such as the National Institutions of Health (NIH), require that the works produced using their funds be made accessible to the public. CSUSB Library's Scholarly Communication Librarian supports researchers in complying with NIH's Public Access Policy.
How does this impact my grant-funded research?
In addition to giving researchers increased access to information, and making a researcher's own work more accessible, many funding bodies, such as the National Institutions of Health (NIH), require that the works produced using their funds be made accessible to the public. CSUSB Library's Scholarly Communication Librarian supports researchers in complying with NIH's Public Access Policy.
How to Publish in Open Access Journals
Some researchers are cautious about selecting OA publications for their research due to misconceptions or uncertainty about how to choose an outlet. The following resources may answer some of those concerns.
- "Debunking the Myths of Open Access" (Mendeley Blog)--answers some of the frequent concerns about OA.
- The Open Access Citation Advantage (SPARC)--an extensive list of studies showing the advantage of open access in increasing article citations.
Choosing and evaluating an open access publication
- Why Open Research?: How to find a suitable open access journal offers a step-by-step guide to finding and selecting an open access journal for publication.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) offers an online directory of high-quality, peer-reviewed books published in open access format..
- Think. Check. Submit offers a simple checklist researchers can use to assess the credentials of a journal or book publisher. See also the Think. Check. Attend. site for a similar checklist on conferences.
- Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (World Association of Medical Editors)
International OA publications
- OpenEdition.org offers a collection of international OA journals and other publication platforms
- Open Humanities Press Journals [requires UNT login] an international, scholar-led open access publishing collective that includes journals in a variety of humanities disciplines
- Oxford Open [requires UNT login] is a database of OA publications, including books and journals, offered by Oxford University Press
- redalyc.org provides a network of scientific journals in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain & Portugal
- SciELO.org offers a directory of OA scientific journals in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain & Portugal
Protecting author's rights
OA publishing can actually help authors maintain more control over access to and use of their published work, provided they learn how to negotiate their intellectual property rights and utilize Creative Commons licenses.
- CSUSB Scholarly Communications Library can help answer questions or concerns about authors' rights, provide information on negotiating author addenda, and discuss licensing and other intellectual property issues.
- Creative Commons provides a set of customizable copyright licenses for sharing your work.
Producing an open access journal
One way to increase the quality and value of OA publishing is for scholars to establish OA journals in their own fields.
- CSUSB Libraries Journal Hosting provides hosting and consultation support to CSUSB departments and faculty who are interested in producing their own online open access scholarly journal.