Information About Open Access
Open access addresses the problem of limited access to scientific outputs, often caused by high subscription fees.
It is the practice of providing readers with free access to scientific knowledge (articles, books, research data) and the licensing of this knowledge to make it more widely used by researchers, industry and citizens.
The definitions of open access in the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access (October 2003) are important.
According to the BOAI's definition, open access is "making scientific literature available via the Internet, without financial, legal or technical barriers, to be accessed, read, saved, copied, printed, scanned, linked to full text
, indexed, exported as data to software, and used for any lawful purpose".
Self-archiving (Green way): The author archives an electronic copy of the peer-reviewed publication in an institutional or subject archive. This publication is then freely accessible to anyone.
An archive enables an institution to manage, preserve and display its scientific output.
An archive is a valuable tool in an institution's research information system and evaluation process and provides value-added services for the scientific community.
Open access publishing (Golden path): Authors publish their scientific works in open access journals or monograph series.
These publications are freely accessible to end users connected to the Internet. Copyright usually belongs to the authors. Open access publications follow the same processes as paid publications (e.g. peer review), but provide open access to the content of the publications.
There is no correlation between the quality of a publication and the way it is accessed.
Benefits of Open Access
By removing legal, commercial and technological barriers to access to scientific knowledge, the research process becomes more efficient and research results more visible. Moreover, open access avoids duplication, enhances knowledge and technological transfer and supports innovation.
Various stakeholders in the scholarly communication system benefit from open access to scientific research and research data:
Institutions and authors gain immediate visibility of their research outputs, thus increasing the dissemination and use of their results.
Open access leads to increased research impact, international collaboration and creates new funding sources and opportunities.
Researchers do not spend time searching for articles they cannot access through libraries.
Moreover, researchers can often extract data and information from articles in a variety of research fields, using text and data-mining technologies that can only work effectively on open research content to create new knowledge.
Funding agencies, universities and research institutions monitor the quality and transparency of the research process, the return on investment in research and benefit from increased visibility at national and international level.
They can also adopt new models for research evaluation based on alternative metrics.
Libraries potentially benefit from the adoption of open access.
This is because open access allows libraries to increase their users' access to scholarly materials and can help reduce the amount libraries spend on traditional journal subscriptions.
With the right investment in skills and infrastructure, open access also offers libraries the opportunity to take on new roles as providers of open access services (managing archives and/or publishing activities) and new scholarly communication methods consultation services.
Publishers that embrace open access gain more exposure for their publications, are more transparent in their business models, are more open to new opportunities, and focus on providing new value-added services to their communities.
To innovate and increase their competitiveness by developing and producing new products, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) benefit greatly from immediate open access to groundbreaking research results.
Limited access to scientific outputs on a subscription basis hinders SMEs from innovating.
Finally, expanded and improved transparency of the scientific process and subsequent access to knowledge leads to more scientifically literate citizens who are better able to cope with the challenges of the 21st century.
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