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Open Access Resources: Home

What is Open Access?

Open access logo

OA is freely available, digital, online information. Open access (OA) is a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research information available to readers at no cost.

  • Typically paperless in production of content 
  • Authors may incur an Article Processing Charge (APC)
  • May rely on advertising revenue to maintain operations
  • Enables research outlets for niche and emerging areas of study
  • Offers unrestricted and enduring online access to publications
  • Authors retain various levels of copyright

Archives vs. Publishers

Open Archives -- digital warehouse holding research, and other, outputs; allows for free and continuous access for consumers to read, download, and distribute

Open Publishers -- access + rights = open; work is typically published online with unrestricted access to read, download, and distribute; authors may incur a fee to publish

How open is it?

The three main types of open access are referred to as:

Green OA

A version of the manuscript is freely available in a repository (self-archiving).

  • Authors publish and then archive the work
  • The work is held in a repository like PubMed Central 
  • Readers may freely access the work
  • May be grant funded and/or funded directly by the host institution

Gold OA

Final version of manuscript is freely available immediately upon publication by the publisher (fully open access journal).

  • Work is immediately available to the reader via the publisher
  • May be funded by advertising dollars and/or APCs

Hybrid OA

Journal has both open and closed article access. Open access fee is usually paid by author during publication process. 

  • Published in an OA or hybrid journal (subscription-based, but may have an APC for open access)

Preprint - Postprint - Published

Thomas Shafee / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

Thomas Shafee / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

Options for Publication by Rights