What is Open Access?
A commonly used definition of Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. (From SPARC)
In a traditional publishing model, publishers own the rights to the articles in their journals. Users have to pay to access them, either through institutional subscriptions commonly managed by libraries, or through personal subscriptions or one-time use fees.
More information on Copyright:
Publishing an Open Access Article
An author can publish an open access article in a few different ways:
- By publishing in an open access journal.
The contents of open access journals are free for users to access, but generally the author(s) must pay publication fees once an article has been accepted for publication. Open access publications often pass the cost associated with publishing and running a journal on to the author, as opposed to the reader.
- By putting a version of their article in an institutional repository.
Institutional Repositories are a way to bring together all of an institution’s research under one umbrella, with an aim to preserve and provide access to that research. Adding an article to an institutional repository is free, and frequently improves an article’s impact and reach. Submitting an article to an institutional repository does not have to happen at the time of publication, articles that were published in the past can be added to a repository.
USF’s Institutional Repository