Open Access Week is an annual scholarly communication event focusing on open access and related topics. It occurs globally, both online and offline, and at the end of October—this year, October 21 - 27, 2024.
Consult the International Open Access Week website.
Open Access Week Archive:
The following is a list of substantial readings on Open Access that are freely available online.
Knowledge Unbound - Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002-2010 by
Peter Suber has been a leading advocate for open access since 2001 and has worked full time on issues of open access since 2003. As a professor of philosophy during the early days of the internet, he realized its power and potential as a medium for scholarship. As he writes now, "it was like an asteroid crash, fundamentally changing the environment, challenging dinosaurs to adapt, and challenging all of us to figure out whether we were dinosaurs." When Suber began putting his writings and course materials online for anyone to use for any purpose, he soon experienced the benefits of that wider exposure. In 2001, he started a newsletter -- the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter, which later became the SPARC Open Access Newsletter -- in which he explored the implications of open access for research and scholarship. This book offers a selection of some of Suber's most significant and influential writings on open access from 2002 to 2010. In these texts, Suber makes the case for open access to research; answers common questions, objections, and misunderstandings; analyzes policy issues; and documents the growth and evolution of open access during its most critical early decade.
Understanding Open Access by
Understanding Open Access provides a scholarly author-oriented look at the ins and outs of open access publishing. The guide addresses common concerns about what "open access" means, how institutional open access requirements work, and why authors might consider making their work openly accessible online. Our aim is to provide real-life strategies and tools that authors can use to work with publishers, institutions, and funders to make their works available on the terms most consistent with their dissemination goals. Like all Authors Alliance materials and guides, Understanding Open Access is available on an open access basis and can be downloaded for free from authorsalliance.org/oa.
Open Access Indicators and Scholarly Communications in Latin America by
The present book is divided into two sections. The first section presents a narrative summary of Open Access in Latin America, including a description of the major regional initiatives that are collecting and systematizing data related to Open Access scholarship, and of available data that can be used to understand the (i) growth, (ii) reach, and (iii) impact of Open Access in developing regions. The first section ends with recommendations for future activities. The second section includes in-depth case-studies with the descriptions of indicators and methodologies of peer-review journal portals SciELO and Redalyc, and a case of subject digital repository maintained by CLACSO.
Open Access by
The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work "open access": digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue. In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber's influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.
Transforming Scholarly Publishing Through Open Access by
Can scholarly journal articles and other scholarly works be made freely available on the Internet? The open access movement says "yes," and it is having a significant impact on scholarly publishing. There are two major open access strategies: (1) open access journals publish articles (typically peer-reviewed articles) that are free of charge and may be able to be reused under an open license (e.g., a Creative Commons license), and (2) self-archiving of digital e-prints (typically prepublication versions of articles) by authors in digital repositories, where they can be accessed free of charge and sometimes reused. Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography, which has over 1,100 references, provides in-depth coverage of published journal articles, books, and other works about the open access movement. Many references have links to freely available copies of included works.
The Access Principle by
Questions about access to scholarship go back farther than recent debates over subscription prices, rights, and electronic archives suggest. The great libraries of the past—from the fabled collection at Alexandria to the early public libraries of nineteenth-century America—stood as arguments for increasing access. In The Access Principle, John Willinsky describes the latest chapter in this ongoing story—online open access publishing by scholarly journals—and makes a case for open access as a public good.
Open access policies are increasingly being adopted by individual colleges and universities. These policies often mandate open access publishing and dissemination of scholarly activity by faculty at the respective universities and define guidelines for that dissemination, typically through the campus institutional repository. The following resources are useful for librarians who may be helping to enact an institutional open access policy or support it after its passage:
The launch of the internet nearly 30 years ago allowed for the development of the concept of open access. Early open access initiatives included the launch of the online subject repository arXiv in 1991, the publication of several free, peer reviewed online journals in the early 1990s, and the development of the National Institute of Health's repository PubMedCentral in 2000. Then, in 2002 and 2003, three distinct meetings took place in Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda which gave rise to a formal and still globally accepted definition of "open access." The widely accepted definition of open access literature is as follows: Open access literature is digital, online free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.1
Although costs for digital publishing can be lower than print publications, open access publishing is not free. Instead of charging the reader for access through purchase or subscription, alternative business models have arisen that provide the publishers with the financial means for providing access to scholarship. One cost recovery model is the implementation of article processing charges (APCs). These charges are paid by the author (who may get assistance from research grants, the university, or the library) prior to publication. Production costs can also be offset by the sale of memberships, add-ons and enhanced services by the publisher. In some cases, journals are fully subsidized by a sponsoring institution, funder or other organization without charging authors or readers. However, while open access publishing has the potential to reduce costs, this is not the only driving force behind open access advocacy. The benefits to individual scholars, related institutions, scholarly communication, and the general researching public are also primary motivating factors.
There are two primary routes in which open access literature can be published or otherwise made available. These two routes are frequently described as "gold open access" and "green open access".
There are many ways2 that libraries and other institutions can support open access, ranging from simply providing information to enacting open access policies and establishing institutional repositories:
1 This definition comes from Peter Suber, who is considered the foremost leader and expert on the topic. His Overview of Open Access is an excellent brief explanation of what open access publishing is and why it is an important initiative.
2 This list comes from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library Guide to Open Access
How to Debunk Common Open Access Myths
Open Access Publishing - Studies on Business Models
