Library and Academic Success: Scholarly Communications: Open Access

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Open Access

Open Access Defined:

According to the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), Open Access is defined as:

"...an emerging model of scholarly communication that promises to greatly improve the accessibility of results of research. In general terms, scholarly research that is published in open access is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (although it does require that proper attribution of works be given to authors)."

Find out more on CARL's official webpage: http://www.carl-abrc.ca/advancing-research/scholarly-communication/open-access/

The video by the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) brings together representatives from North American universities with established faculty open access policies and those in the process of developing such policies. It was formed to share information and experiences and to illuminate opportunities for moving faculty-led open access forward at member institutions and advocating for open access nationally and internationally.

Open Access Overview
This is an introduction to the various components involved with open access by Peter Suber, Director, Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication.
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on their investment in research and education. As a catalyst for action, SPARC focuses on collaborating with other stakeholders—including authors, publishers, libraries, students, funders, policymakers and the public—to build on the opportunities created by the Internet, promoting changes to both infrastructure and culture needed to make open the default for research and education.

Open Access Defined:

From the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Open Access is defined as:

"Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access is the needed modern update for the communication of research that fully utilizes the Internet for what it was originally built to do—accelerate research."

Green vs. Gold Open Access

Green:

Gold:

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Scholarly Communcation guide on Green, Gold, Gratis and Libre - From Stevens Institute of Technology, this webpage discusses Green, Gold, Gratis and Libre access in detail.
Open Access SPARC - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on our investment in research and education. As a catalyst for action, SPARC focuses on collaborating with other stakeholders—including authors, publishers, libraries, students, funders, policymakers and the public—to build on the opportunities created by the Internet, promoting changes to both infrastructure and culture needed to make open the default for research and education.

Open access directories contain open access journals which are, generally speaking, quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web covering all subjects and languages. The following is a listing of some of the main directories which organize and provide access to open access journals.

BioMed Central
BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher with a large portfolio of peer-reviewed open access journals. The journals span all areas of biology, medicine and health, including broad interest titles such as BMC Biology and BMC Medicine alongside specialist journals, such as Malaria Journal and BMC Infectious Diseases.
All original research articles they publish are made freely accessible online immediately upon publication. Authors retain the copyright to their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons Attribution License which allows articles to be re-used and re-distributed without restriction, as long as the original work is correctly cited.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
The primary aim of the DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Aggregators can integrate the records in their commercial services and libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, helping scholars and students to discover the books. The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards.
Directory of Open Access Journals
DOAJ is a community-curated list of open access journals and aims to be the starting point for all information searches for quality, peer reviewed open access material. The aim of the DOAJ is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short, the DOAJ aims to be the one-stop shop for users of open access journals.
HighWire Press
HighWire Press partners with independent scholarly publishers, societies, associations, and university presses to facilitate the digital dissemination of more than 3000 journals, books, reference works, and proceedings. HighWire also offers a complete manuscript submission, tracking, peer review, and publishing system for journal editors, Bench Press.
HighWire has been affiliated with Stanford University since 1995, with the launch of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC Online). Science, the Journal of Neuroscience, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) soon joined with HighWire to become pioneers who defined today's online journal.
Open Access Journals - Science Direct
This is a listing of open access journals published by Science Direct in the areas of physical sciences, engineering, life science, health sciences,
social sciences and humanities.
Open Science directory
The Open Science Directory is a search tool for open access journals and journals in special programs for developing countries.
It has been developed by EBSCO and the Hasselt University Library based upon a request by marine information management experts collaborating within the framework of the IOC’s (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO) IODE (International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange) program.
PLOS (Public Library of Science)
PLOS was founded in 2001 as a nonprofit Open Access publisher, innovator and advocacy organization with a mission to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. PLOS applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to works they publish. This license was developed to facilitate Open Access—namely, free immediate access to, and unrestricted reuse of, original works of all types. Under this license, authors agree to make articles legally available for reuse, without permission or fees, for virtually any purpose. Anyone may copy, distribute or reuse these articles, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. Additionally, the journal platform that PLOS uses to publish research articles is Open Source.
PubMed Central
PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
Scholarly and Research Communication
A peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, Open Access online journal that publishes original contributions to the understanding of production, dissemination, and usage of knowledge. It emphasizes the dynamics of representation and changing organizational elements, including technologically mediated workflows, ownership, and legal structures.
SpringerOpen: Journals A-Z
SpringerOpen, launched in June 2010, includes Springer’s portfolio of 200+ peer-reviewed fully open access journals across all areas of science. SpringerOpen journals and books are made freely and permanently available online immediately upon publication. They are subject to high-level peer review, author and production services ensuring quality and reliability of the work. Authors publishing with SpringerOpen retain the copyright to their work, licensing it under a Creative Commons license. To cover the cost of the publication process, all SpringerOpen journals and books charge an open access fee.