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Open Scholarship

Open Access Explained

Open Access (OA) is a set of principles and practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges. Under some models of open access publishing, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright. It's aim is to remove the price barrier to academic literature, which is otherwise hidden behind a paywall of academic journals; but it does not always allow those accessing the work the rights to share and adapt the work – this still needs to be done through an open licence.

An illustration of a human face as a metaphor for the concept of open access. The text in the illustration reads as follows: If “open access” has a face, what it would be like? Ordinary head but bald. So she/he can choose different hair styles depending on who’s the person to talk to. Ordinary ears with a “superpower” ability to pick up problems in the society. Ordinary eyes but with microscopic lens (left eye) and telescopic lens (right). So she/he can see very small things far away in tier/his research. What’s not in the face is a good beating hear to share her/his thoughts meaningfully, the only extraordinary part. Ordinary mouth to speak in different languages and styles depending on the audience. It would be an ordinary face but with super power ability so it would beyond superficial-physical things…Access doesn’t only mean downloadable PDFs…

Dasaptaerwin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Traditional Publishing Model and OA

This video provides a great overview of traditional academic publishing models and how OA can offer new solutions to access.   

Jorge Cham, based on interviews with Jonathan Eisen and Nick Shockey, CC BY 3.0

Types of OA

Gold OA is a publishing pathway that allows the final version of an article to be freely and permanently available online for everyone to read. With gold OA, authors retain the copyright to the work.

Green OA is known as self-archiving, where the author uploads an earlier version of their article in repositories or on their site/social media. Often times the author's copyright is given up with this pathway. 

 

Venn diagram highlighting the different levels of open access in scholarly publishing, as a function of cost to the readers and authors, copyright retention, and peer review.

Jamie-farquharson, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons