WHAT IS OPEN  ACCESS ?

"Science is, above all, communication."  W. Gibbs

---

 WHAT IS OPEN ACCESS?

Open access means that full-text of research papers are available online as soon as they are published, free of charge, with no restrictions on access or use.

The open access movement began in the late 1990s in  biomedical sciences as a response to increasing journal cost, which priced many individual and institutional subscribers out of access to the latest research studies.

More about open access:

Association of Research Libraries. Framing the issue: Open Access
A resource guide highlighting the key points of open access concept.

Open Access Overview
An introduction to open access concept by Peter Suber, Earlham College.

Scientific research: The publication dilemma
An article by Victoria Shelton, George Mason University Libraries, introducing the key points of open access publishing.

A very brief overview of open access
A concise overview of open access concepts by Peter Suber, Earlham College.

WHY IS OPEN ACCESS IMPORTANT?

The idea of open access is based on the view that research findings, particularly in health sciences, should be freely and immediately available to the world-wide scientific community, clinicians, and the public. 

"Timely access to a broad range of current scientific publications is a necessity…for  both our clinicians, so that they may care for patients with the most up-to-date data, as well as our scientists who are making the breakthroughs in such areas as cancer, infectious, cardiovascular and neurological diseases,” said Dr. Dorothy Bainton, vice chancellor of academic affairs at University of California at San Francisco. 

Open access advocacy

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access
An alliance of organizations representing taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that support open public access to taxpayer-funded research.

Create change
An advocacy and education resource cosponsored with the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries. Includes downloadable brochures.

Open Access Now: Advocacy/Posters
Includes 10 downloadable posters.

Open Access Working Group
A group  of organizations for collective advocacy of open access to research. Initiated by SPARC. Contains resources on Federal Research Public Access Act, the National Institutes' of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, and more.

 

Top

 PUBLISHING MODEL

According to the Association of Research Libraries, open access publications are "created with no expectation of direct monetary return and made available at no cost to the reader on the public internet for purposes of education and research." However, while open access publications are intended to be free for readers, they are neither free for publishers nor for authors. For publishers, the expenses consist of peer review, manuscript preparation, and server space. For authors, or their research sponsors, the expenses consists of article processing fees on each accepted article. The processing fee can be paid either by authors themselves or through their institution's membership.

More about open access publishing model:

Frequently asked questions about BioMed Central's article-processing charges
Explains how the BMC's article-processing charges cover the cost of the publication process to allow free and immediate access to the research articles.

PLoS: Questions about publication fees
Explains how the PLoS's publication fees cover the cost of the production of PLoS's journals.

Publishing open access journals:
A brief overview from the Public Library of Science
Discusses various components of the open access production process, including costing and staffing issues.

Top

 OPEN ACCESS & COPYRIGHT

Open access works are free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The authors, who publish in open access journals, retain the copyright to their articles. Authors are required to license the articles according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows anyone to download, reuse, reprint, redistribute, or copy them, so long as the original authors and source are credited. Open access articles can be translated in any language, added to a course pack, anthology, or Web site,  printed for distribution, or republished as long as the source is properly cited.

More about open access copyright:

BioMed Central: About copyright

BioMed Central: Copyright and license agreement

Creative Commons Legal Code (the full attribution license

PLoS: License

SPARC: resources for authors

Top

 LEADERS

BioMed Central (BMC), a UK-based publishing house,
provides open access to full-text of research articles published in its 100+ online journals covering all areas of biology and medicine.

Public Library of Science (PLoS), a California non-profit group
of bioscientists formed in 2000, publishes eight online peer-reviewed open access journals.

Top

 INITIATIVES

Bioline International
A non-profit electronic publishing service committed to  providing  open access to quality research journals published in developing countries.

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), a series of principles for promoting and maintaining open access developed at a Meeting of the Academies of Sciences in Budapest, January 2003. 

caBIG (cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid)
An open-access information network, or grid, developed under the leadership of the National Cancer Institute's Center for Bioinformatics. Enables cancer researchers to share tools, data, applications and standards.

E-Print Network
A search tool that that combines full-text searching through PDF documents residing on websites. Finds research mainly in physical sciences but also in life sciences, computer and information technologies, and other disciplines.

FreeMedicalJournals.com
A site, dedicated to the promotion of free access to medical journals over the Internet.

Geo-Leo (Geo-Library Experts Online)
A free virtual library portal for literature in geosciences. Users can search among 1,7 million records from a single platform.

Health InterNetwork
Launched by the Secretary General of the United Nations and is led by the World Health Organization (WHO). Aims to ensure that health information and the technologies to deliver it are widely available to health personnel professionals, researchers, scientists, and policy makers.

Open Archives Initiatives (OAI)
Promotes and maintains web-accessible archives of scholarly papers as a means of increasing access to scholarly research.

Open Content Alliance (OCA)
Represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.

Oxford University Press (OUP)
Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), one of the most important OUP's journals, has adopted an open access publishing model in January 2005.

PubMed Central(PMC)
An open access digital repository at the National Institutes of Health.

SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online)
With a focus on developing countries, SciELO provides access to scientific journals published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
"An alliance of universities, research libraries, and organizations built as a constructive response to market dysfunctions in the scholarly communication system."

Springer, a publisher of 1,250 scientific journals, has taken a step towards open access by offering its authors the Springer Open Choice model. 

Top

 PRINCIPLES & STATEMENTS

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
Adopted at the conference on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, 20-22 Oct 2003, Berlin

Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
A document drafted during a  meeting on April 11, 2003 at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in order to stimulate discussion on open access within the biomedical research community.

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), a series of principles for promoting and maintaining open access developed at a Meeting of the Academies of Sciences in Budapest, January 2003. 

HHMI Public Access Policy
Issued by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in June, 2007, the policy requires the HHMI's scientists to publish their original research articles in scientific journals that allow the articles and supplementary materials to be made freely accessible in a public repository within six months of publication. The policy will become effective January 1, 2008.

IFLA Statement on open access to scholarly literature and research documentation
A statement adopted by the Governing Board of IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) at its meeting in The Hague on 5th December 2003.

OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy: Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding
A declaration on access to research data from public funding, issued in January, 2004, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organization that focuses on fostering good governance in the public service and in corporate activity.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research (Public Access Policy), May 2, 2005.
"...requests and strongly encourages all investigators to make their NIH-funded peer-reviewed, author's final manuscript available to other researchers and the public through the NIH National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC) immediately after the final date of journal publication."

Open Letter to the U.S. Congress signed by 25 Nobel Prize winners (August 26, 2004)
Calls for support for open access to scientific materials.

Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Signed by 26 Nobel Prize Winners (July 8, 2007)
Expresses strong support for the House Appropriations Committee's directive to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that requires the NIH Public Access Policy to be made mandatory.  

Washington D.C. principles for free access to science
The principles outlining the commitment of not-for-profit publishers to providing free access and wide dissemination of  research findings. March 16, 2004.

Wellcome Trust Position Statement in Support of Open Access Publishing
A statement by Wellcome Trust, a UK-based major "independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health," to support "open and unrestricted access to the published output of research, including the open access model . . . as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible."

Top

 STARTING AN OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL

BMC: Independent open access journals
BioMed Central has developed the technology for researchers to start Open Access journals under their own editorial control. They are called Independent journals.

Guide to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal
From SPARC Consulting Group for the Open Society Institute.

Open Access Journal Business Guides
From the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Publishing open access journals
A brief overview from the Public Library of Science (PDF).

SPARC: Publishing resources
Intended for those who wish to publish and manage open access journals and archives.

Top

Designed and maintained by Victoria Shelton
Life Sciences Librarian, George Mason University Libraries

Last updated September 20, 2007