Open Access
What is Open Access?
Open Access is giving free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone,worldwide.
Society as a whole can benefit from an expanded and accelerated research cycle in which research can advance more effectively because researchers have immediate access to all the findings they need.
Who benefits from Open Access?
The visibility, usage and impact of researchers’ own findings increases with open access, as does their power to find, access and use the findings of others. Universities co-benefit from their researchers’ increased impact, which also increases the return on the investment of the funders of the research, such as governments, charitable foundations, and the tax-paying public.
For teachers, Open Access means no restrictions on providing articles for teaching purposes. Only the URL need be provided; Open Access takes care of the rest. Publishers likewise also benefit from the wider dissemination, greater visibility and higher journal citation impact factor of their articles.
the “green road” of OA self-archiving, where authors provide OA to their own published articles, by making their own eprints free for all.
the “golden road” of Open Access (OA) journal- publishing, where journals provide OA to their articles (either by charging the author-institution for refereeing/publishing outgoing articles instead of charging the user-institution for accessing incoming articles, or by simply making their online edition free for all).The two roads to Open Access should not be confused or conflated; they are complementary. (EPrints is focussed largely on the green road, because it is the fastest and surest way to reach immediate 100% OA; but the green road might eventually lead to gold too.) OA self-archiving is not self-publishing; nor is it about online publishing without quality control (peer review); nor is it intended for writings for which the author wishes to be paid, such as books or magazine/newspaper articles. OA self-archiving is for peer-reviewed research, written solely for research impact rather than royalty revenue.
How to provide Open Access
An Institutional Repository (IR) is the best way to provide open access to research output.
Software such as EPrints provides a web-based OAI- compliant IR for free.
This open source software can be downloaded for free at http://files.eprints.org
How can you implement Open Access?
Putting Open Access into Practice
1. Researchers, their institutions and their funders need to be informed of the benefits of providing Open Access and instructed on how quickly and simply it is done.
2. An Institutional Open Access Repository such as EPrints needs to be created (and registered in ROARMAP, so as to be seen and emulated by other institutions).
3. Seriously and carefully consider adopting and implementing an open access self-archiving mandate for systematically filling your repository with the target content (and registered, so as to be seen and emulated by other institutions).
4. Establish champions in your institution to advocate open access and become an active member of open access networks and communities to share and hear about good practices.
EPrints Software and Services
An Institutional Repository is the best way to provide open access to research output. Software such as EPrints provides a web-based OAI-compliant IR for free.
This open source software can be downloaded for free at http://files.eprints.org
If you would prefer us to take care of your repository, including building, customisations, hosting and support, contact EPrints Services to discuss your needs.