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Open Access

This guide provides tips and resources for navigating the Open Access landscape.

What is Open Access (OA)?

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC),  which is a library community supported entity, defines Open Access as the following:

“Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives.”

OA Benefits

There are many benefits to Open Access publishing; one major benefit is the way that Open Access provides scholarly research and knowledge in the quickest, fairest, and widest way possible. There are some disadvantages too; one major disadvantage is the shifting cost of publishing to authors or institutions (e.g., libraries). The following tables lists more of the OA advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

Disadvantages
  • Scholarly research results are disseminated more quickly and broadly
  • Navigating the different types of Open Access
  • Greater access to research due to more worldwide visibility and less cost barriers
  • Shifting costs of publishing to authors or institutions (e.g., libraries)
  • More transparency and public accountability
  • The ongoing problem of predatory publishers in OA and the subsequent need to critically appraise OA journals to ensure high standards of peer review and quality
  • Greater impact (i.e., citation counts and visibility) of research results

  • Greater control over your research’s intellectual property through Creative Commons licensing of your work

OA Explained

These three influential documents define the international Open Access movement:

The following table compares traditional/paywall subscription models with Open Access ones.

Subscription

Open Access
  • Editorial Board
  • Editorial Board
  • Peer Reviewed
  • Peer Reviewed
  • Indexed in MEDLINE, etc.
  • Indexed in MEDLINE, etc.
  • Profit or Non-Profit
  • Profit or Non-Profit
  • Paywalled: i.e., the readers pay subscription/article fee(s) to access the research
  • Authors may pay an “Article Processing Charge” (APC) depending on the Open Access type used
  • Copyright is usually owned by the publisher
  • Author retains copyright, usually using a “Creative Commons License”
  • The world has limited access to material
  • Open to the world

 

This section is to help researchers distinguish credible OA journals from predatory OA journals.

There are many myths and skepticism about Open Access publishing that need to be busted as publishing Open Access is a safe, and vetted way to get published.

Myth #1  – OA journals don’t have an exhaustive or in-depth reviewing process

  • Bust #1 – OA journals follow very exhaustive and in-depth per reviewing processes that are comparable with traditional non-OA scholarly journals

Myth #2  – APC is a major hurdle in getting published in OA journals

  • Bust #2 - Although it’s customary for authors to pay APCs to publish in either Hybrid or Gold OA journals there are partnerships with the publishers through your institutional library, like JH Libraries for example, that either waive the APC for corresponding authors or provide an APC discount to corresponding authors (hyperlink to the JHU Publishing Agreement section).

    Also, there are other types of OA journals like Diamond OA and Green OA that do not require APC fees in order for you to publish your scholarly work.

Myth #3 – OA journals are all predatory