Happy International Open Access Week! This year Open Access Week is from October 21st through the 27th. Open Access Week was created by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) “to connect the global momentum toward the open sharing of knowledge with the advancement of policy changes and the importance of social issues affecting people around the world.” This year’s theme is “Community over Commercialization.” The theme Community over Commercialization looks to “prioritize approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community” (Open Access Week).
What is Open Access?
Open access “is the free, immediate, online availability of the research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment” (SPARC). Why do researchers need open access resources? Researchers need open access resources because traditional publishers that have moved to the internet often create technical, legal, and financial barriers that prevent people from accessing them. Open access publishing removes these barriers. Open access publishers host their content on websites that any user with an internet connection can use, which helps facilitate easy access. Also, open access journals clearly state the licensing and copyright of materials so that users know what they can and cannot do with the materials. This prevents legal gray areas and users unknowingly using the materials in a manner not allowed by law. Lastly, open access materials are not locked behind a paywall. Being free, users can access it without having to pay for an individual article or a subscription to a journal which often costs hundreds of dollars for individual subscribers. All of these factors make it easier for researchers to access and use this information, which grows the knowledge and accelerates research within their communities. For more information about open access, check out this brief video.
“Community over Commercialization”
SPARC’s continuation of the theme Community over Commercialization for a second consecutive year for International Open Access Week highlights the need for scholarship to be more freely available and accessible to the public and academic communities. Publishing research in the Internet era needs to shift from traditional journal models where users or institutions pay a fee for access to open access journals that researchers do not have to pay to access. This shift will help improve research outcomes and make information more accessible to everyone. As the Public Library of Science (PLOS) notes, with “immediate and unrestricted access to the latest research, we can accelerate discovery and create a more equitable system of knowledge that is open to all.”
Fortunately, in recent years more organizations have been focusing on publishing and hosting open access materials. These publishers make it so researchers can publish and find up-to-date research in their respective fields which builds their knowledge, advances their research, and educates their community. To get started with using open access resources in your research, check out these organizations that publish or direct you to open access sources:
- PLOS: PLOS is a non-profit open access publisher that publishes journals in the sciences and medicine.
- Open Library Of Humanities: OHL is an open access publisher of humanities scholarship with over 33 journals.
- MDPI: MDPI has 443 peer-reviewed journals in a wide variety of disciplines such as biology, business, and engineering.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): DOAJ is an index of open access journals from around the globe.
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): DOAB is a discovery service that provides access to open access books.
Open Access Week Events
There are plenty of events being held to celebrate International Open Access Week! Here are free online events that you can attend:
- Wednesday, October 23 2pm EST: “Handing you the keys to open access”
- Thursday, October 24 9:30am EST: Karger in Conversation – Open to Interpretation: Translating the Vocabulary of Open Access into Action
- Thursday October 24th 1:30pm EST: Data Cartels and Commercial Obstacles to Open Access
More events can be found at the Open Access Week website.
Find out more about Open Access
The growing availability of open access resources provides more opportunities for research to be shared with the public and academic communities, but it can be challenging to get started with open access. Fortunately, many open access publishers, libraries, and other organizations have information about open access. To learn more, click on the resources listed below!
Benjamin Cushing is a Research and Instruction Librarian at The Catholic University of America Libraries.
Further Reading
Open Access at Catholic University: This guide explores what The Catholic University of America is doing with Open Access and digital scholarship.
SPARC: Provides an overview of open access and why it is beneficial.
Cornell University Open Access Publishing: Learn more about the different types of open access publishing and the many effects they can have.