Definition:
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. [Peter Suber, “A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access”]Why is it important to you?
- Wider distribution of scientific information by moving beyond access limited to subscription-based publications.
- Authors generally have more rights to their published work.
- Authors, or their sponsors, pay fees upfront to defray production costs; peer-review is unchanged.
Why is it important to libraries?
- Supports goal of making information resources more widely available.
- Creates opportunities to consider alternative funding models for scholarly literature.
The average annual subscription to a health science journal in 2009 is $1,401—representating a 41% price increase over the past 5 years. [Periodicals Price Survey 2009, Library Journal, v. 134, n. 7, April 15, 2009]
Open Access Publication does not eliminate publication costs. (See the Library’s decision to drop Open Access membership with BioMed Central, and BioMed Central’s response.)
Authors’ Rights:
- Authors should know their rights, no matter where they publish, in order to retain appropriate control of their work.
SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, has developed an Author Addendum that modifies the publication agreements most publishers require authors to sign.
More Information:
- ACRL (Scholarly Communication - Association of College & Research Libraries)
- Association of Research Libraries (Framing the Issue: Open Access)
- Open Access News (Peter Suber, Editor)
- Open Access Now (BioMed Central newsletter)
- Public Library of Science (PLoS): Open Access
Yale University has a PLoS Institutional Membership granting Yale authors a 10% discount on publication fees. The membership is jointly funded by the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library and Kline Science Libraries.
- PubMed Central (NLM’s free archive of life sciences journals)
- SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
