Open Access Defined An Introduction by Patti McCall

What is Open Access? Wikipedia: Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. OA is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters.peer-reviewed scholarly journal Budapest open Access Initiative defined Open Access as open access as the "world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature, completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds." Budapest open Access Initiative 2

Who Pays? Publication Fees – Maximize Research Impact – More likely to be cited than subscription based journals Institutional subsidies – Many universities are self archiving research publications 3 Open Access Doesn’t mean free. Someone ha to pay publication costs.

Open Access Publishers There are a number of reputable open access publishers PloS BioMed Central Wiley Open Access 4 These publishers offer hybrid open access, like Wiley and BioMed Central

Predatory Open Access Authors paying to publish = Scamming opportunity Do your research! Beall’s List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publisher Beall’s List DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals Identifies open access journals covering all scientific and scholarly fields DOAJ 5

Gaining Ground From the National Institutes of Health (NIH) : ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer- reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. Complete NIH Public Access Policy DetailsPubMed CentralComplete NIH Public Access Policy Details 6

Additional Resources Open Access Week “A global event, now in its 6th year, promoting Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research.” Find out how you and your library can become involved. Open Access Week SPARC The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition SPARC UCF Libraries Research Guide on Open Access UCF Libraries Research Guide 7

For More Information on Open Access UCF Libraries Scholarly Communications ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit Association of Academic & Health Sciences Libraries Open Access Toolkit Open Access Toolkit 8