Open Access Defined
"Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives." SPARC
Learning About Open Access
Open Access "is a system of free, unfettered access to scholarship, learning content, and data in a way that allows it to be widely shared so that all who wish to gain access to it may do so, free of paywalls, access fees, subscriptions or other barriers." Stephen Bell
Why is this important? It allows anyone access to scientific knowledge so that they can build upon it. Because of Open Access, a high school student, Jack Andraka, was able to develop a cost-effective diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer and win the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. This was possible because the research he used was from content freely available in PubMed Central.
Learn more:
- Open Access OverviewPeter Suber provides an excellent introduction for those who are new to it.
- HowOpenIsIt? A Guide for Evaluating the Openess of Journals"Created by SPARC in conjunction with PLOS and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the HowOpenIsIt? Open Access Guide standardizes Open Access terminology in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource."
- Why Open MattersSPARC provides an explanation of the importance of open access/education/data. They are "critical to accelerating the way we discover knowledge and unlocking our potential to solve big problems and make new discoveries."
Models of Open Access Publishing
There are two primary models of Open Access publishing:
- Gold Open Access: Research published in a journal is immediately and openly available when published.
- Green Open Access: A version of the published article is available in a repository, often with a link to the published work. Otherwise, the final version is published in a subscription journal.
Unpaywall & Open Access Helper
Often when doing research, even in library subscribed databases, you may come across an article that you do not have access to. If you are searching on Google Scholar and that happens, you may be asked to pay to access the article. That's called hitting a paywall. To see if there's an Open Access version of the article, try this
- Unpaywall: An open database of scholarly articles
- Install the Unpaywall browser extension, which will point you to Open Access versions of an article immediately while searching or
- Install the Open Access Helper extension.
"Open Access Explained" by Jorge Cham, Nick Shockey, Jonathan Eisen licensed under CC BY
"Open Access in less than 4 minutes" by Hornswoggle licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
