Scholarly Communication  Tags: research scholarly_communication publishing open_access copyright  

Very simply, open access (OA) information means digital information that is free to view, print and download.  You don't need a subscription.  When you publish in an OA journal or repository, more people can see your work.

For a longer definition, see: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm.

Approximately 4:00.  Click on the Fullscreen Toggle icon below (looks likes a little TV) for a fullscreen view.

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OASIS, the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook, is up.  Researchers, librarians, publishers, administrators, public and students can use this site to find information on and "practical steps for implementing" open access at their institutions.

The Open Citation Project has a bibliography of studies done on the citation rates of open access works:

http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

There are over 4000 open access (OA) journals covering nearly every academic discipline.  The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides a list and allows you to search 1500 of those at article level.  Find OA journals here:

Faculty at several universities in the U.S. have signed resolutions that require them to place copies of their publications in an open access repository.  This has been a common practice in European universities for years.  More and more American universities are instituiting policies.  Harvard, MIT and STandford were some of the first.  Read more on them below.  To see a list of all instituitons with OA policies, use ROARMAP.

Harvard (article from LibraryJournal.com)
http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6532658.html#news1

MIT (article from MIT News)
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/open-access-0320.html

Stanford School of Education (from School's web site)
http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/faculty/openaccess.html

* More and more schools are adopting OA policies, including University of Oregon and Gustavus Adolphus College. (June 2009)