Subject Guides: Scholarly Communication: Open Access Publishing

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What is Open Access and How can I learn more about it?

Open Access (OA) is the practice of making peer-reviewed, scholarly research freely and readily accessible online with no restrictions. The following list of links and resources are from trade groups, professional associations, universities, academic consortiums and publishers seeking to educate scholars on the value of Open Access, while making Open Access publishing more viable and widespead.

Open Access Overview
Written by Peter Suber, Director of Harvard's Open Access Project.
Open Access Directory
Maintained by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College
Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association
OASPA offers "a forum for bringing together the entire community of Open Access journal publishers."
Directory of Open Access Journals
A repository of "Free, full-text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals covering all subjects and many languages." This site would be exceedingly helpful for reseachers and faculty here at AU interested in learning more about Open Access journals in your discipline.

Open Access Publishers

The following are major Open Access publishers.

BioMedCentral Open Access
A large Open Access Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) publisher, offering access to over 220 peer-reviewed journals.

PLoS: Public Library of Science
A nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. Includes the journals PLoS ONe, PloS Biology, PloS Medicine, and more.

PubMed Central
"A free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine."

arXiv
Electronic archive and distribution server for research articles. Covered areas include physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology and statistics.
University of Pittsburgh E-Journal Publishing
The University of Pittsburgh's University Library System offers an E-Journal Publishing infrastructure committed to Open Access principles.

Open Access Initiatives

These are links to important initiatives and policy statements regarding Open Access publishing.

The Bethesda Statement
The Bethesda Statement is one of the first public commitments made by scholars and researchers to Open Access publishing.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative is an international effort to promote Open Access publishing online.
MIT Faculty Open Access Policy
MIT is one of a handful of prominent universities that has adopted a Faculty Open Access Policy.
NIH Public Access Policy
The National Instititute of Health's (NIH) Public Access Policy mandates that all research funded by the NIH must be made freely and openly available to the public via PubMed Central.
Alliance for Taxpayer @ccess
The Alliance for Tax Payer @ccess, directed by SPARC, is "a coalition of patient groups, physicians, researchers, educational institutions, publishers and health promotion organizations that support barrier-free access to tax payer funded research."