What is Open Access?
Open Access refers to the use of digital technology to make access to publicly funded research results freely and widely available to anyone with an internet connection.
Some forms of Open Access remove the barriers created by subscription paywalls where research results are only available via a subscription.
Benefits of Open Access
- OA research is not hidden behind a subscription paywall so it can be widely read, used and cited to attract potential collaborators
- Compliance with funder requirements to share knowledge of publicly funded research
- Makes research more discoverable to policy makers and government resulting in increased potential of ‘societal impact’ of research
For Open Access FAQs see the Monash University Research Office site
Publishing Open Access
Monash researchers can publish papers in key journals, as Open Access, without paying article processing charges by utilising library Read and Publish agreements.
Models of Open Access publishing
| Green Open Access or Self Archiving | Gold Open Access |
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Researchers submit to a journal and then self-archive their author manuscript in an Institutional Repository like the Monash myResearcher (Pure) Repository. Check SHERPA/ROMEO to see publisher embargo restrictions on when a self-archived output in a repository may be made open access. Monash researchers do not need to pay additional fees to make articles Green Open Access.
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Researchers publish in Open Access journals which usually involves a fee for providing freely available immediate access to the final version of the article. Hybrid Open Access occurs when a journal typically requires a subscription but will provide Gold Open Access to an article if the author pays a fee. |
Finding Open Access research
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The Open Access Button will search across the web for a freely accessible full-text version of an article The next time you can’t access the research you need, use the Open Access Button. You get instant, legal access to articles and request articles that aren’t available.
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Unpaywall The browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, adds a green tab beside research articles that you can read for free.
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Open Access directories
Journals
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
For a list of Open Access Journals with an Australian publisher view here
Books
OAPEN is dedicated to open access, peer-reviewed books. OAPEN operates two platforms, the OAPEN Library (www.oapen.org), a central repository for hosting and disseminating OA books, and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB, www.doabooks.org), a discovery service for OA books.
Open Access organisations
WAME (World Association of Medical Editors)
Global non-profit voluntary association of editors of peer-reviewed medical journals.
COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)
Membership is open to editors of academic journals and others interested in publication ethics
OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association)
The mission of OASPA is to support and represent the interests of open access journal and book publishers globally in all scientific technical and scholarly disciplines
QOAM (Quality Open Access Market)
A marketplace for scientific and scholarly journals which publish articles in open access. These journals are quality scored based on academic crowd sourcing.
SHERPA/ROMEO
Lists publisher copyright and self-archiving policies. Listings also indicate whether or not the publisher has a "paid access" option with direct links to the specific publisher policies on paid access.
JULIET
A complement to the ROMEO service provided by SHERPA for authors and repository administrators, which lists summaries of publishers' copyright transfer agreements as they relate to archiving. Further information on repositories is available from OpenDOAR.
SHERPA/FACT
A tool to help researchers check if the journals in which they wish to publish their results comply with their funders requirements for open access to research.
SPARC (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.
AOASG (The Australasian Open Access Strategy Group)
For open access to all the outputs of scholarship in Australia and New Zealand.