Faculty Resource Guide

Open Access (OA) refers to research literature that is free and available to the public that allows users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or use them for any other lawful purpose without financial, legal, or technical barriers. There are two types of OA and four important components to OA.

Types:

Green OA: When the author makes their article openly available via an institutional archive, repository, or personal website.

Gold OA: 1) When the publisher makes an article openly available from the publisher's website, 2) articles are licensed for sharing and reuse via Creative Commons licenses or similar, and 3) authors typically pay a fee if they wish to publish an article online allowing for free public access and retain the copyright.

Components:

1. Authors keep their copyright.
2. Zero embargo period.
3. Research data is shared with the article. 
4. Creative Commons license (any of the non ND licenses work) can be added to the research article that enables text and data mining.

"5.1: Open Access to Scholarship" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0

There are several benefits to using OA, it can be beneficial to you, future researchers, and the even the world! OA is especially beneficial for faculty, staff, and students. Some of those benefits include saves them money or from choosing to only buy or subscribe to one journal, gives them access to the most up to date data, increases access and reach, etc. Check out the infographic or down load the pdf below to see more benefits.

"Benefits of Open Access" by Danny Kingsley & Sarah Brown is licensed under CC BY 4.0