Open Access: Overview

Open access (OA) refers to freely-available online information.

Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often has less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditional published articles.

Most OA journals comply with well-established peer-review processes and maintain high standards for publishing.

Green OA publishing refers to the self-archiving of published or pre-publication works for free public use. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional repository such as Scholarship@SOU

Gold OA publishing refers to journals that are available to their readers free-of-charge from the moment of publication, without embargo or restriction. Authors may or may not pay an article-processing charge to have their articles published in Gold OA journals. Examples of Gold OA include PLOS (Public Library of Science) and BMC (formerly BioMed Central).

Gratis OA is information that is free of price barriers but not permission barriers, so it allows for free online access to works but not the reuse, republication, or remixing of the original work.

Libre OA is information that is free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restriction. You may reuse, republish, and remix the original work without permission from the creator or copyright-owner.

While 'free' implies that the information does not cost anything to access, OA publishing still often involves a cost to the author to publish the work.

Hybrid OA (also known as Pseudo OA)

Some traditional journals offer an option for authors to make their individual articles freely accessible to anyone worldwide, for an additional fee. However, other articles in the journal remain accessible only through a paid subscription. This is known as double-dipping or pseudo OA because it makes an institution, author, or researcher pay twice to access the article.

Good open access practices include:

• Same peer-review process as traditional models
• Unrestricted access to all readers, thus increasing visibility and potential impact of the work
• Discoverable and accessible to everyone through traditional indexes and search engines such as Google Scholar
• Copyright remains with the authors
• Conformity with federal law requiring that research conducted using NIH funds and grants from other agencies be made freely available.

Parts of this guide were adapted from the Arizona State University Open Access Guide by Anali Perry, Simmons University Open Access Guide by the Beatley Library Open Access Learning Community, and Eastern Michigan University Predatory Publishers Guide by Julia K. Nims. 

It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.