Open Access is the means of disseminating scholarly and scientific literature to researchers and anyone else who might benefit from accessing the results of publicly funded research. As a result, Open Access publications are digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber, 2012).
The easier it is to access a work, the more likely it is to be downloaded, read, used, and cited. For this reason, funding agencies such as NHMRC and ARC are increasingly placing Open Access conditions on publications resulting from their research grants.
There are a number of Open Access publishing models, with gold, green and Read and Publish Agreements being the most prominent at JCU:
Green Open Access: involves self-archiving the author accepted manuscript of a journal article in an institutional repository such as ResearchOnline@JCU. This model is free for authors.Contact your Liaison Librarian to find out more.
What is Open Access, from SHB Online on Youtube
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%.
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.
What are the benefits of Open Access?Individual benefits of Open Access
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:
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.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License, unless otherwise noted. 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.
