Open Access Publishing
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.We engage and invest in research in order to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation, enrich education, and stimulate the economy – to improve the public good. Communication of the results of research is an essential component of the research process; research can only advance by sharing the results, and the value of an investment in research is only maximized through wide use of its results.
Yet, too often, because of cost barriers or use restrictions, research results are not available to the full community of potential users. The Internet gives us the opportunity to bring this crucial information to a worldwide audience at virtually no marginal cost, and allows us to use it in new, innovative ways. This has resulted in a call for new framework to allow research results to be more easily accessed and used— the call for Open Access.
How Does Open Access Work?
Open Access publishers consider the terms outlined by the Creative Common's Attribution-Only license (CC-BY) to be the standard terms for Open Access.
Open Access Publishing:
Authors can choose to publish their research articles in a growing number of journals that meet the full definition of Open Access. Articles are free to all interested readers, and the publishers place no financial or copyright barriers between the readers and the article.Open Access publishing is the fastest rowing segment of the scholarly publishing market, and journal options are now available for nearly every area of research. A comprehensive list of Open Access journals is provided by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Author Rights:
As the authors of a research paper, you have ability to ensure that your article can be accessed and used by the widest possible audience.As an author publishing in Open Access journals you obtain the copyright to your own materials.
Why Should We Care About Open Access?
Over the past decade, Open Access has become central to advancing the interests of researchers, scholars, students, businesses, and the public - as well as librarians. The digital environment poses new challenges and provides new opportunities in the sharing, review, and publication of research results. Ensuring broad, unfettered access to the knowledge contained in primary research articles and the rights to use these articles fully will play a key role in seeing that the scholarly communication system evolves in a way that supports the needs of scholars and the academic enterprise as a whole.
Increasingly, institutions that support research – from public and private research funders to higher education institutions – are implementing policies that require researchers to make articles that report on research generated from their funding openly accessible to and fully usable by the public.
