Open access (OA) refers to information that is not restricted to subscribers or purchasers, but is open to everybody. Open access information can come in many forms, including peer-reviewed journal articles, datasets, psychological assessments, and more. It is completely free of charge to access, though some OA journals are funded through charges to the authors who publish in the journal.
Green OA refers to self-archiving of published works or accepted manuscripts for public use. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional or disciplinary archive such as ArXiv or PsyArXiv.
Gold OA refers to works that have been published as open access by the publisher and are hosted on the publisher's website. A journal article may be considered Gold OA if it is published as open access in a subscription journal (known as a hybrid model) or if it is published in a completely open access journal. You can see examples of Gold OA journals in the "Open Journals" section of this guide.
Open Access by
A concise introduction to the basics of open access, describing what it is (and isn't) and showing that it is easy, fast, inexpensive, legal, and beneficial.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 by
Influential writings make the case for open access to research, explore its implications, and document the early struggles and successes of the open access movement. 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.
Radical Solutions and Open Science by
This open access book presents how Open Science is a powerful tool to boost Higher Education. The book introduces the reader into Open Access, Open Technology, Open Data, Open Research results, Open Licensing, Open Accreditation, Open Certification, Open Policy and, of course, Open Educational Resources. It brings all these key topics from major players in the field; experts that present the current state of the art and the forthcoming steps towards a useful and effective implementation. This book presents radical, transgenic solutions for recurrent and long-standing problems in Higher Education. Every chapter presents a clear view and a related solution to make Higher Education progress and implement tools and strategies to improve the user's performance and learning experience. This book is part of a trilogy with companion volumes on Radical Solutions & Learning Analytics and Radical Solutions & eLearning.
This overview is adapted from the page What is Open Access? by Cornell University Library.
