Understanding Open Access

What is OA?

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and practices through which research outputs like journal articles are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.

In "traditional" scholarly publishing, the publisher owns the rights to the articles in their journals. Individuals looking to read these articles may encounter a paywall, requiring them to pay a fee for access. Institutions and libraries (including Lane Library) help provide access to such paywalled research by negotiating with the publishers and paying costly subscription fees. In contrast, open access ensures that the outputs of the research process can be read and built upon by everyone.

Open access to publications is a component of Open Science, which encompasses a variety of efforts focused on making scientific research more transparent and accessible. Though the term is frequently used to refer to efforts aimed at ensuring access to the products of the research process - journal articles, datasets, code, and other materials - open science also encompasses efforts to ensure that the scientific enterprise is inclusive and equitable.

This guide is intended to help you understand open access-related policies, the various routes you may use to make work "open", and the OA-related resources available to you through Lane Library. 

If you have specific questions about open access, please do not hesitate to contact your liaison librarian. If you are interested in engaging in a broader discussion about open access and other open science-related issues, consider attending a meeting of the Open Science Reading Group.

Methods of Making Work Open

There are a variety of ways to make work "open". Below we have highlighted some of the most common and provided detail about how they differ during the writing and submission process, during the evaluation (peer review) process, during the production and publishing process, and how readers are able to access and read articles.

Please note that open access is best conceived of as a continuum of practice. As shown by visualizations like How Open Is It?, individual journals may exhibit greater or lesser degrees of "openness".

Open Access Publishing

Open Access publishing (also sometimes called Gold OA) is a form of open access in which a publisher makes all articles and related content associated with a certain journal available for free immediately on the journal's website. In this model, authors are often asked to bear the cost of publication, typically through an article processing charge (APC). Examples of this form of open access are journals like eLife and those published by PLOS.

Writing
Evaluation
Publishing
Reading

The authors write an article and submit it to an open access journal.

The article goes through the peer review process. Once accepted, the authors may pay an article processing charge.

The article goes through the production process, where it is formatted, typeset, etc. The publisher then makes it available free of charge and other access barriers online.

Readers can read the article free of charge.

Self Archiving

Self-archiving (also sometimes called Green OA) is a form of open access in which, independently of publication by a journal publisher, an author posts their work to a website where it can be accessed and read by others. The NIH Public Access Policy can be considered an example of this type of open access. Stanford University's proposed open access policy includes self archiving.

There are a variety of ways to find and read articles that have been self-archived in this manner. We recommend the Unpaywall browser extension.

Writing
Evaluation
Publishing
Reading

The authors write an article and submit to the journal of their choice.

The article goes through the peer review process. Once accepted, the authors submit a copy of the peer reviewed manuscript to a repository or post it on a website.

The article goes through the production process, where it is formatted, typeset, etc. The publisher then makes it available, potentially behind a paywall

Readers can read the self-archived copy of the article free of charge but may have to pay to read the version published by the journal publisher.

Preprints

Preprints are a special case of self-archiving where authors submit a copy of an article that has not yet gone through peer view to a preprint repository so it can be accessed and read by others. Preprint servers for biomedical and health sciences-related work include bioRxiv and MedRxiv. Europe PMC can be used to search for preprints and there are a limited number of COVID-19 related preprints in PubMed Central.

Writing
Evaluation
Publishing
Reading

The authors write an article and post it on a preprint server. They may also submit it to a journal.

Once posted, the preprint may be commented upon and reviewed by readers. Authors may revise their preprints in light of these comments. If submitted to a journal, the article will also go through the peer review process.

If submitted to a journal, the article will go through the peer review process. Once published, the article will may include a link to the original preprint.

Readers will be able to read the preprint free of charge but, if it was also submitted to a journal, may have to pay to read the version published by the journal publisher.

Other Forms of OA

In addition to the forms of open access discussed above, there may be cases where a "traditional" journal makes temporarily removes paywalls for specific articles or instances where paywalls are removed for articles after a certain period of time following publication. There are also cases where a "traditional" journal will make an individual article free to read if the authors pay a fee. In some cases, the journal may maintain copyright of the articles under these models.

More Information

The video below, created by Jorge Cham and featuring Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen, provides a quick introduction to the motivations behind and principles of open access.

For even more information about open access, see the list of resources below: