INFORMATION

Open Access (OA)

Open access publications are freely and permanently available online to anyone with an internet connection. Unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium is permitted, provided the author/editor is properly attributed. Open access has gained tremendous support from both authors, who appreciate the increased visibility of their work, as well as science institutions and funders, who value the societal impact of freely available research results.Most publishers own the rights to the articles in their journals. Anyone who wants to read the articles must pay to access them. Anyone who wants to use the articles in any way must obtain permission from the publisher and is often required to pay an additional fee.

Why Open Access

Open access journals and books operate under a reversed business model to the traditional subscription-based publishing model. Instead of charging users a fee to read the content, they charge an open access fee at the beginning of the publication process and this enables all the content to be made freely available. The author is responsible for making or arranging the payment.The Internet gives us the opportunity to bring this crucial information to a worldwide audience at virtually no marginal cost, and allows us to use it in new, innovative ways. This has resulted in a call for new framework to allow research results to be more easily accessed and used the call for Open Access.

How Does Open Access Work
The internet allows us to distribute knowledge more widely, more efficiency and at a lower cost than was previously possible. However, publishing still has costs that need to be covered – such as proof reading, copyediting, digital presentation and preservation, promotion and dissemination of your work. With Open Access, authors (or their institutions or funders) pay an Article Processing Charge to cover these costs, ensuring their work is properly evaluated for quality and made easy to find, download and read.

There are four primary mechanisms that can be used to enable Open Access:

  • Open Access Publishing: Authors can choose to publish their research articles in a growing number of journals that meet the full definition of Open Access. Articles are free to all interested readers, and the publishers place no financial or copyright barriers between the readers and the article.
  • Digital Repositories: Authors can choose to deposit their research articles in digital archives (often called Digital Repositories or Institutional Repositories) which conform to the standards of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), and enable readers to freely access and fully reuse the article text.
  • Effectively Managed Author Rights: As the authors of a research paper, you have ability to ensure that your article can be accessed and used by the widest possible audience. -
  • Local, National and International Open Access Policies: Institutions that support research, from public and private research funders to higher education institutions, can implement effective policies that that support making Open Access to scholarly research articles the default mode for their researchers.