What is Open Access?

Open Access refers to a set of principles on how scholarly information is disseminated online, free of cost or other barriers, and comes in a number of varieties, often presented in a color-coded naming system. The most familiar and common of these are the Diamond, Gold, and Green (or  Hybrid) types of open access. 

• Diamond/Platinum OA: similar to Gold OA, but the publisher does not charge any article processing/publication fees, nor do they charge subscription fees to readers. 
• Gold OA: in this model, the publisher makes articles available for free online immediately. Often these have creative commons licenses and require the author to pay fees for publication. 
• Green OA: sometimes referred to as "self-archiving" green OA is where the author posts the article on their own personal site or through an institutional repository.
  • Green OA is often tied to Hybrid journals, a journal that contains a mixture of open and closed articles. These publishers are funded from two streams; OA article processing charges and subscriptions from libraries. 

How To Support Open Access

Scientific freedom is alive and well! You are not required to publish open access. Questions to consider are:

• Is this the best journal for your work?

  • Some journals are gold and therefore you have to pay the fee.

• Is this the only option?

• Do you have funds to pay an APC?

  • If no, archive the manuscript for free. This will still satisfy public access requirements.

• What do your co-authors want?

. Here are other ways to support open access:

Benefits of Open Access

•  Access 
  • Publishing open access allows anyone to access your publication for education, research, or collaboration.
•  Visibility 
  • Open access boosts your researches visibility, more access = more eyes on
•  Citations 
  • With open access and increased visibility you enjoy higher citation rates
•  Impact 
  • Higher citation rates mean you create a larger impact with your work
•  Collaboration 
  • Open access opens to door to more collaboration via the above methods
•  Representation 
  • Without the barriers of paywalls or subscriptions there is increased representation on a global scale