Open Access Publishing: Overview

If this is your first time hearing about open access publishing, check out our eBooks to get some background information.

Open access (OA) journals are free, unrestricted, online journals containing peer-reviewed scholarly research.  Anyone with an internet connection can get access to the information, even if he or she does not attend or work at a college or university.

Read on to find out how OA journals may be helpful for you, your colleagues, and your students.

Just like traditionally-published journals, OA journals have:

	An author who submits an article for publication
	A publisher who includes that article in their journal
	A reader who can access that content

The main difference is that the reader doesn't have to pay a fee to access these articles or journals.

People have different reasons for publishing in open access journals.  Do any of these apply to you?

• You believe in the principle of making information and research publicly available.
• The best journal for your research happens to be an OA journal.
• You want to make sure your work is seen by as many people as possible.
• You are concerned about the rising costs of traditionally-published journals.
• You want to retain the copyright to your own work and self-archive it or submit it to an institutional repository.
• You believe that people are more likely to find, read, and cite your work if it's published in an OA journal.
• Your funding source requires that you publish in an OA journal.

There are two kinds of open access:  green open access and gold open access.

	Green:  Authors retain the right to self-publish a version of their article somewhere online, such as in a repository or a website.  There is often an embargo, or a delay, before the article can be published online, but after that time, the article is freely available to readers.
	Gold:  The article is published on a publisher's website or in a database.  The journal may charge a fee, which is paid by either the author or the institution where the author works.  The article is published right away with no embargo and is freely available to readers.

There are two additional terms that describe open access:  gratis and libre.

	Gratis:  Meaning "free of charge," gratis open access means that published articles are available without charge to the reader and without salary or royalty to the authors.
	Libre:  Meaning "freedom" or "liberty," libre open access means that published articles can be reused, transformed, or adapted without needing special permission or paying a fee.  For example, a libre open access article can be posted in a professor's Blackboard course or used as the basis for class materials or quizzes.  Users are still expected to cite or credit the author of the article.

No.  Green/gold and gratis/libre describe two different concepts.  An article may be gratis green open access, libre gold open access, or any combination of the four.

Here are some examples of what you can do as a reader with different types of open access articles: