ACRL/EBSS Psychology Committee

General Information

"Open Access is a means of disseminating scholarly research that breaks from the traditional subscription model of academic publishing. It has the potential to accelerate greatly the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation and enrich education by reducing barriers to access. Open Access shifts the costs of publishing so that readers, practitioners and researchers obtain content at no cost. However, Open Access is not as simple as “articles are free to all readers.” Open Access encompasses a range of components such as readership, reuse, copyright, posting and machine readability. Within these areas, publishers and funding agencies have adopted many different policies, some of which are more open and some less open. In general, the more a journal’s policies codify immediate availability and reuse with as few restrictions as possible, the more open it is."

Supporting article:
HowOpenIsIt? A guide for evaluating open access journals. (2014). SPARC. https://sparcopen.org/our-work/howopenisit/

Finding OA Journals & Articles

General Information

Open Access Monograph: a scholarly monograph which is made freely available with a Creative Commons license.

Supporting articles:

• Adema, J. (2019). Towards a roadmap for open access monographs: A knowledge exchange report. Zenodo. https://zenodo.org/record/3260908#.YNEOMWhKiUk
• Crossick, G. (2016). Monographs and open Access. Insights, 29(1), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.280
• McCormick, M. (2019). Open-access monographs: New tools, more access. EDUCAUSE Review, 54(2), 42-43. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2019/5/open-access-monographs-new-tools-more-access
• Wikipedia contributors. (2021, January 14). Open-access monograph. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:37, March 12, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open-access_monograph&oldid=1000379774

Finding OA Monographs

Through Library Research

What librarians can do in their own work:

• Ensure open access to your own publications (and presentations) by self-archiving them in a digital repository or by publishing in open access journals.
• Educate yourself on the history, current status, and ongoing developments around different scholarly communication topics.
• Volunteer for a committee or an initiative that advocates for openness in the scholarly communication ecosystem.
• Conduct research on scholarly communication topics and ensure open access to resulting publications.
• Additional advice available on the Scholarly Communication Toolkit: Take Action: Ways Librarians Can Engage in Scholarly Communication website from ACRL.

Supporting articles:

Suber, P. How to make your own work open access. http://bit.ly/how-oa. Also recommended is Chapter 10: Self-Help of Suber’s (2012) MIT Press book, Open Access, and the updates to Chapter 10.

Neville, T., & Crampsie, C. (2019). From journal selection to open access: Practices among academic librarian scholars. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 19(4), 591-613. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2019.0037

Through Outreach & Services

What librarians can do to support faculty in open access:

• Assist with rights and permissions.
• Maintain scholarly communication websites, LibGuides, etc.
• Advocate through university governance and administrative channels to shape discussions of open access policies. SPARC has resources to help you build a successful on-campus campaign and can connect you with colleagues who have passed policies themselves through the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI).
• Collaborate with the graduate school and/or office of research to create and host workshops about authorship, scholarly publishing, research data management, and responsible conduct of research. Possible workshop topics include how to comply with research funders’ public access policies and what to consider when choosing an open access journal to publish research findings.
• Engage your elected representatives. The library community and SPARC have led the charge in working with policymakers to ensure that the results of publicly funded research are made freely available. Use SPARC’s legislative advocacy platform to contact your elected representatives in Congress and in your state.

Supporting articles:

Engeszer RJ, Sarli CC. (2014). Libraries and open access support: new roles in the digital publishing era. Missouri Medicine, 111(5):404-407. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172089/

Heaton, R., Burns, D., & Thoms, B. L. (2019). Altruism or self-interest? Exploring the motivations of open access authors. College & Research Libraries, 80(4), 485-507. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.4.485