The material included on the UAH "Scholarly Communications Toolkit" subject guide page is based upon / selected from the website of the same name here from the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL).
Reuse of all materials is subject to the same license placed by the ACRL:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The launch of the internet nearly 30 years ago allowed for the development of the concept of open access. Early open access initiatives included the launch of the online subject repository arXiv in 1991, the publication of several free, peer reviewed online journals in the early 1990s, and the development of the National Institute of Health's repository PubMedCentral in 2000. Then, in 2002 and 2003, three distinct meetings took place in Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda which gave rise to a formal and still globally accepted definition of "open access." The widely accepted definition of open access literature is as follows: Open access literature is digital, online free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.1
Although costs for digital publishing can be lower than print publications, open access publishing is not free. Instead of charging the reader for access through purchase or subscription, alternative business models have arisen that provide the publishers with the financial means for providing access to scholarship. One cost recovery model is the implementation of article processing charges (APCs). These charges are paid by the author (who may get assistance from research grants, his university, or his library) prior to publication. Production costs can also be offset by the sale of memberships, add-ons and enhanced services by the publisher. In some cases, journals are fully subsidized by a sponsoring institution, funder or other organization without charging authors or readers. However, while open access publishing has the potential to reduce costs, this is not the only driving force behind open access advocacy. The benefits to individual scholars, related institutions, scholarly communication, and the general researching public are also primary motivating factors.
There are two primary routes in which open access literature can be published or otherwise made available. These two routes are frequently described as "gold open access" and "green open access.
There are many ways2 that libraries and other institutions can support open access, ranging from simply providing information to enacting open access policies and establishing institutional repositories:
1 This definition comes from Peter Suber, who is considered the foremost leader and expert on the topic. His Overview of Open Access is an excellent brief explanation of what open access publishing is and why it is an important initiative.
2 This list comes from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library Guide to Open Access
Further Resources on the History of the Open Access Movement:
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? In this ALA Editions Special Report, Crawford helps readers understand what OA is (and isn't), as he concisely; Analyzes the factors that have brought us to the current state of breakdown, including the skyrocketing costs of science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) journals; consolidation of publishers and diminishing price competition; and shrinking library budgets; Summarizes the benefits and drawbacks of different OA models, such as Green, Gold, Gratis, Libre, and various hybrid forms; Discusses ways to retain peer-review, and methods for managing OA in the library, including making OA scholarly publishing available to the general public. Addressing the subject from the library perspective while taking a realistic view of corporate interests, Crawford presents a coherent review of what Open Access is today and what it may become.
Open Access by
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.
Knowledge Unbound - Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002-2010 by
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.
How to Debunk Common Open Access Myths
Open access policies are increasingly being adopted by individual colleges and universities. These policies typically endorse open access principles and define guidelines by which persons covered by the policy should disseminate research and knowledge, usually through the college or university's institutional repository. The following resources are useful for libraries who may be helping to enact an institutional open access policy or support it after its passage:
Good Practices for University Open Access Policies - this guide, developed by Harvard University, sets forth good practices for college and university open-access policies. It's based on the type of rights-retention OA policy first adopted at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Kansas. although the guide includes recommendations that should be useful to institutions taking other approaches.
Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) - organization whose members have passed or are working to pass open access policies at their institutions. See also the recently released COAPI Toolkit OA Policy Resources. The public facing version of this site includes various resources under "Files" including documents to assist with policy development, promotion, and implementation.
ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies) - searchable international registry charting the growth of open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require or request their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository.
MELIBEA - Open Access Policy Effectiveness Indicator - MELIBEA is a directory and an estimator of institutional open access policies regarding scientific and academic outputs. As a directory, it describes the existing policies. As a estimator, it subjects them to qualitative and quantitative analyses based on fulfillment of a set of indicators that reflect the statements of an institutional policy.
Open Access Week is an annual scholarly communication event focusing on open access and related topics. It takes place globally during the last full week of October in a multitude of locations both on- and offline. Typical activities include talks, seminars, symposia, or the announcement of open access mandates or other milestones in open access. The following resources are available to assist libraries with their Open Access Week planning: