Open Access

Open Access (OA) scholarly literature is free to read online and licensed so others can legally share, adapt, and build on it. 

The following graphic describes the key differences between conventional and OA publishing.

The primary difference between conventionally published scholarship and OA scholarship is in how it is funded, not in how it is produced and evaluated by researchers.

Publishing costs persist, so the central challenge with OA publishing lies in how to sustainably fund them. Author fees, institutional memberships, grant funding, and cooperative models are all on the table in terms of OA models in scholarly publishing.

OA helps fix what many describe as a "broken" system of scholarly communication, where:

• Authors transfer copyright to publishers and often need to obtain permission to use their own work in the future
• The public pays twice for research - once to fund it and again to access it
• Libraries have to "buy back" the research and scholarship that researchers, including those at their own institutions, produced and evaluated

Benefits for readers:

• Keep your access after graduation or between jobs - no institutional login required
• Weather library budget cuts - OA content is available even when pricey subscription bundles are cut
• Read without affiliation - independent scholars, journalists, clinicians, and lifelong learners all get free, lawful access to the scholarly record

Benefits for authors and researchers:

• Increase visibility and readership - more people can find and use your work
• Boost citation rates - studies show that OA articles are cited more often
• Drive innovation and global impact - open results speed translation into policy, practice, and new research
• Improve public access - taxpayers see the return on publicly funded research
• Meet funding requirements - many grants now mandate OA dissemination of research

There are several common misunderstandings about OA. Two of the most common are:

1. When I publish OA, I lose my copyright; I lose control of my intellectual property.

When you publish OA, you keep your copyright (which is not typically the case in conventional publishing). In order to make your scholarship freely open (OA) to readers, you apply an open license to it. This license, usually a Creative Commons license, works with copyright law. You retain copyright and give others "permission in advance" (via the license) to read and use your scholarship in specific ways. Furthermore, every Creative Commons license requires author attribution. When someone uses your openly licensed work, they must give you credit. 

2. OA scholarship is not peer reviewed or is lower quality than traditionally published scholarship. 

Most OA scholarship is peer reviewed. Some traditionally published scholarship is not peer reviewed. A publisher's peer review policies have nothing to do with whether or not scholarship is OA. Peer review is a separate process, and scholarship quality varies among all publications, whether open or not. 

For more information about OA misconceptions, watch Editage's "Open Access - Myth vs. Fact" video, or read "Busting the top five myths about open access publishing" in The Conversation. This article, "Common myths about open access"  from OAPEN, which focuses on OA book publishing, includes information that also applies to OA journal publishing.

 Except where otherwise noted, this Open Access library guide by Wendy Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.