Open Access is the means of disseminating scholarly and scientific literature, free of charge over the internet and, to other researchers and anyone else who might benefit from accessing the results of publicly funded research. Open Access communication of research outputs maximises the distribution, potential usage and outcomes of research findings.
Open Access publications are digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber 2012). The Open Access movement is based on the philosophy that knowledge derived from public funding should be freely accessible for public use.
Open Access can make the difference between being cited and not cited. The easier it is to access a work, the more likely it is to be downloaded, read and cited. Increasingly, funding agencies are placing Open Access conditions on the publications resulting from research grants, requiring you to deposit a copy of your article in your institution’s Repository, ResearchOnline@JCU.
Open Access is . . .
If an article is "Open Access" it means that it can be freely accessed by anyone in the world using an internet connection. This means that the potential readership of Open Access articles is far, far greater than that for articles where the full-text is restricted to subscribers. Evidence shows that making research material Open Access increases the number of readers and significantly increases citations to the article - in some fields increasing citations by 300%.
Open Access is not . . .
It is important to point out that Open Access does not affect peer-review; articles are peer-reviewed and published in journals in the normal way. There is no suggestion that authors should use repositories instead of journals. Open Access repositories supplement and do not replace journals. Some authors have feared that wider availability will increase plagiarism: in fact, if anything, Open Access serves to reduce plagiarism. When material is freely available the chance that plagiarism is recognised and exposed is that much higher.
Published research results and ideas are the foundation for future progress. Open Access publishing leads to wider dissemination of information and increased efficiency in any research area, by providing:
Open Access To Ideas
Whether you are a patient seeking health information, an educator wishing to enliven a lesson plan, or a researcher looking to formulate a hypothesis, making papers freely available online provides you with the most current peer-reviewed information and discoveries.
Open Access To The Broadest Audience
As a researcher, publishing in an open access journal allows anyone with an interest in your work to read it - and that translates into increased usage and impact.
Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.
Green Open Access: Self-archiving of Accepted Versions of their articles (also known as Postprints) by authors in their institutional repository (i.e.ResearchOnline@JCU) or other Open Access site. Green Open Access publishers endorse immediate Open Access self-archiving by their authors, allowing authors to make the final version of their manuscript freely available despite being published in a subscription-based journal.
Gold Open Access: Unrestricted and immediate online access to the full content of a scholarly journal via a publisher's website. This model usually requires an Article Processing Charge (APC) paid by the author or their institution.
Hybrid Open Access: Unrestricted and immediate online access to individual articles for which authors or their institution pay an Article Processing Charge. This option does not meet the true definition of Open Access if the author is still required to assign copyright ownership to the publisher or if the article is only available from the publisher's website. If the subscription fee for a journal is not proportionately reduced by the number of articles that are (Hybrid) Open Access, publisher profits will be increased further with limited benefit to authors.
Use the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to locate open access journals that do not charge Article Processing Fees.
1. Go to DOAJ
2. In the Search box, enter your discipline or keywords, to search for journal titles
3. On the results page, choose "Without article processing charges (APCs)" on the left.
Note that for journals that do charge fees a price is listed.
We acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants of the nation and acknowledge Traditional Owners of the lands where our staff and students, live, learn and work.
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License. Content from this Guide should be attributed to James Cook University Library. This does not apply to images, third party material (seek permission from the original owner) or any logos or insignia belonging to JCU or other bodies, which remain All Rights Reserved.