Open Access and Scholarly Publishing

Open access (OA) publication provides free, open, online access to journal articles, and other scholarly outputs including conference papers, theses, monographs and book chapters.

Open access publication aims to accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation and enrich education by facilitating the worldwide communication of research and scholarship.

Open access shifts the costs of publishing so that the reader can obtain the content at no cost.

Watch "Open Access" by JISCmedia video below to gain a better understanding of open access publishing. Thise  videos are part of the series of short films about open access information platform made by  open-access.net.

For authors: OA raises your online presence leading to increased visibility, exposure, and impact of your research through expanded readership.

For researchers: OA provides free online access to peer-reviewed research. You are not limited by your institution’s subscriptions to a defined group of journals.

For universities: OA increases public visibility of research being undertaken at the university as it facilitates and reveals research activity, knowledge-sharing, and innovation.

The "Why open access" diagram below provides an excellent visual representation of the benefits of Open Access.

Image by Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown.

Authors interested in knowing more about the Open Access movement will find Kylie Pappalardo’s Understanding Open Access in the academic environment:  A guide for authors informative and useful. 

Abstract

The OAK Law Project aims to facilitate seamless access to knowledge and improve social, economic and cultural outcomes. This guide aims to provide practical guidance for academic authors interested in making their work more openly accessible to readers and other researchers. The guide provides authors with an overview of the concept of and rationale for open access to research outputs and how they may be involved in its implementation and with what effect. In doing so it considers the central role of copyright law and publishing agreements in structuring an open access framework as well as the increasing involvement of funders and academic institutions. The guide also explains different methods available to authors for making their outputs openly accessible, such as publishing in an open access journal or depositing work into an open access repository. Importantly, the guide addresses how open access goals can affect an author’s relationship with their commercial publisher and provides guidance on how to negotiate a proper allocation of copyright interests between an author and publisher. A Copyright Toolkit is provided to further assist authors in managing their copyright.

This article is available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike.