LibGuides: Scholarly Publishing: Open Access

What is Open Access?

Budapest Open Access Initiative Definition of OA

“By open access, we mean its immediate, free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them for any other lawful purpose…”

Open Access Government Legislation & Policies

AB609: California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act
AB609 was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown on 9/29/14. This bipartisan bill makes California the first state in the nation to adopt an open access policy for research that is funded in whole or in part with taxpayer dollars.
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Press Release
Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR)
On February 14, 2013 Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Doyle (D-PA), Yoder (R-KS), and Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, a bill that will accelerate scientific discovery and fuel innovation by making articles reporting on publicly funded scientific research freely accessible online for anyone to read and build upon.
Affordable College Textbook Act
The Affordable College Textbook Act seeks to expand the use of open textbooks on college campuses, providing affordable alternatives to traditional textbooks and keeping prices lower.
FY 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill
On January 16, 2014 Congress passed the FY 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. The bill requires federal agencies under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of the Omnibus bill with research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to articles reporting on federally funded research no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The Open Access Citation Advantage

SPARC Europe: The Open Access Citation Advantage
2015. SPARC Europe examines 70 studies on whether or not there is a citation advantage for Open Access articles. Analysis reveals that 46 studies found a citation advantage, 17 studies found no citation advantage and 7 studies were inconclusive.
Alma Swan: Review of Studies on Open Access Impact Advantage
Findings include percent increase in citation with Open Access:
Computer Science: 157%
Medicine: 300 to 450%
Physics/astronomy: 170 to 580%
Political Science: 86%
Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography
2010. By A. Ben Wagner.
This annotated bibliography lists studies and review articles that examine whether open access (OA) articles receive more citations than equivalent subscription; i.e., toll access (TA) articles.
The Open Citation Project: The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies
Why might open access be of benefit to authors? One universally important factor for all authors is impact, typically measured by the number of times a paper is cited (some older studies have estimated monetary returns to authors from article publication via the role citations play in determining salaries). Recent studies have begun to show that open access increases impact... This chronological bibliography is intended to describe progress in reporting these studies; it also lists the Web tools available to measure impact.

Research Funder Open Access Policies

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy
The National Institutes of Health asks every scientist who receives an NIH research grant, and who publishes the results in a peer-reviewed journal, to deposit a digital copy of the article in PubMed Central (PMC), the online digital library maintained by the NIH. PMC will then provide free online access to its copy some time after the article is published in a journal, the length of the delay to be determined by the author.
National Science Foundation Public Access to Research
In February 2013, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced its commitment to increase public access to the results of NSF funded research.
BioMed Central | Funder policies
BioMed Central has compiled information from major funders of biomedical research regarding their policies and support for open access publication.
SHERPA - JULIET database of research funders' open access policies
ROARMAP: Registry of Institutional Open Access Policies
International registry listing institutions or funders with mandates for open access archiving

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Scholarly Publishing

What is Open Access?

University Open Access Policies

Rising Cost of Academic Journals

Open Access Government Legislation & Policies

Congressional Statment on Open Access

Articles/Blogs

The Open Access Citation Advantage

Research Funder Open Access Policies