open access system is better aligned with the original purpose of conducting science and sharing results openly through the scholarly publishing process. In the long run, the open access approach is more efficient, equitable, affordable, and collaborative.
OPEN ACCESS OPTIONS
Open Access authors have the opportunity to publish in a few ways. The most common are known as “Green” and “Gold” Open Access.
Green OA involves making a version of the article or manuscript freely available in a repository. This is also known as self-archiving. An example of Green OA is a university research repository. OA repositories can be organized by discipline (e. g., arXiv for physics) or institution (e. g., Knowledge@UChicago for the University of Chicago).
Gold OA involves making the final version of the manuscript freely available immediately upon publication by the publisher, typically by publishing it in an Open Access journal and making the article available under an open license. Typically, Open Access journals charge an article processing charge (APC) when an author wishes to (1) publish an article online allowing for free public access and (2) retain the copyright to the article. APCs range from zero to several thousand dollars per article. You can read more about APCs on Wikipedia’s “Article Processing Charge” (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 and available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge). An example of a Gold OA journal is PLOS Biology, one of several scientific journals put out by the nonprofit publisher PLOS (Public Library of Science).
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; https://doaj.org/) is a site that indexes open access journals, and HowOpenIsIt? (licensed CC BY 4.0, available at https://sparcopen.org/our-work/howopenisit/) is a handy tool for evaluating the relative “openness” of journals from fully open-access to closed-access.
Certain emerging models like preprints and hubs are rapidly emerging, and they can provide a new way of considering Open Access publishing outside of the constraints of publisher-mediated models.
Educating Authors about Their Publishing Rights
By understanding copyright and the various scholarly publishing options, librarians can help faculty members and graduate learners navigate the system as they publish research.
