Why Open Access Publishing?
What is Open Access (OA)?
Open access is a publishing model for scholarly communication that aims to provide readers with free access to scholarly information. This is in contrast to the traditional subscription model where readers have to pay a subscription fee, usually via libraries.
One major advantage of open access is that it raises the visibility and prolongs the life span of academic research. The principles of open access are set out in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2012.
Confused with all the OA terminology? Educate yourself with this Open Access Glossary page from the University of Cambridge.
Watch this 3-min video to find out how to gain greater visibility and impact with open access
Publishing in Open Access (OA) journals
There are many ways to make one's work open access when publishing an article:
Publish in a regular journal, but choose an OA-friendly one that allows you to archive your work in an institutional or subject repository or on your own personal web page.
The Sherpa/Romeo site ranks journals according to their policy regarding self-archiving. Type the title of the journal in the search box to find out what the publisher's archiving conditions are.
This site discusses publishing in OA in several disciplines and offers suggestions to authors publishing in those disciplines.
Publish in a regular journal, but license your work to the publisher instead of transferring your copyright to the publisher. You can do this by adding an author addendum, such as the SPARC Author Addendum, to the standard publishing contract.
What is DOAJ?
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides access to high quality, peer reviewed, open access journals. You can locate open access journals published in your field by searching the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, see below). DOAJ classifies OA journals by subject category and can be searched at the article level. DOAJ also provides information on Creative Commons licensing policies and copyright.
As of Feb 2021, DOAJ indexed 15,954 journals and 5,710,000 article records, covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and the humanities.
Established in 2003 at Lund University, Sweden, DOAJ provides a service for reputable open access publishers to register their journals. All DOAJ journals have been approved as quality, peer reviewed open access journals.
DOAJ is independent, mainly supported by academic organisations.
Recommended Blogs & Websites on Scholarly Publishing
Scholarly Kitchen Moderated, independent blog by the Society for Scholarly Publishing, established since 2008
Library Publishing Coalition Association of academic and research libraries engaged in scholarly publishing
SPARC Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
COPE Committee on Publication Ethics
Mind the Gap Landscape Analysis of open source publishing Tools & Platforms by MIT Press
Click here for a free download of
Paywall: The Business of Scholarship
Why care about Open Access (OA)?
Watch this movie to find out!
The Business of Scholarship is a documentary which focuses on the need for open access to research and science. The film questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers, examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher, Elsevier, and looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Google.
Source: paywallthemovie.com