Subject guides: Research metrics and publishing: Open Access

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 OA:

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

Recent report:

Open Access: An Analysis of Publisher Copyright and Licensing Policies in Europe, 2020
This report investigates the copyright retention policy amongst publishers, self-archiving policies and records publisher policies on open licensing, also as relating to the Plan S requirements. It should be understood as a snapshot in time informing on the current policy status.

Models of Open Access publishing

Green Open Access or Self Archiving

Gold Open Access

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.

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.

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image source:https://aoasg.org.au/downloadable-graphics/

Open Access tools

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.

Unpaywall The browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, adds a green tab beside research articles that you can read for free.

Common questions from authors

Who owns Copyright in open access journal articles?

There are different business models for OA journals but generally OA journals seek a non- exclusive licence from the author to publish and the author remains the copyright owner of their work and retain their rights to use the paper.

What is the difference between a journal article that is free and one that is open?

An article may be freely accessible when it is made available in a journal or a repository. But that does not necessarily satisfy the criteria for ‘open’. To be ‘open’ an article must be available to re-use.
The recognised way to do this is to apply a Creative Commons licence. Creative Commons licences are a set of internationally accepted licences which enable a journal or author to share their work and indicate how they wish their work to be used.

Are OA journals peer reviewed?

A quality OA journal will be peer reviewed. The focus of the OA movement is on providing OA to peer reviewed research articles.
The key variables in journal quality are the quality of authors, the quality of editors, and the quality of referees, all of which are independent of the journal's access policy and business model (Suber, 2009).

More information is available from:

Open Access Directories

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

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.

OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories.

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 complements 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 is a tool to help researchers check if the journals in which they wish to publish their results comply with their funder's requirements for open access to research.

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.

AOASG (The Australasian Open Access Strategy Group)

Advocate
Collaborate
Raise Awareness
Lead & Build Capacity

For open access to all the outputs of scholarship in Australia and New Zealand.