What is Open Access?
Open access publishing is the practice of making scholarly literature freely available online to anyone interested in reading it without any barriers to access. Gratis open access is making published articles available for users to read without having to pay anything. But, it does not grant the user any right to make copies, distribute, or modify the published work in any way beyond.
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| Open access promotes free distribution of valuable scientific knowledge for all. |
Libre open access allows the published articles be available online at free of charge, and it goes further by granting the readers with additional rights, usually via a Creative Commons license, so that people are free to reuse and make copies of the work.
Green open access is a process of self-archiving of articles by the authors by sharing them on their own website, or in their institution’s Institutional Repository or in some other public archive.
Gold open access articles are published in an open access scholarly journal, where the journal will handle hosting and distributing the scholarly articles in such a way that they are freely accessible by all. Gold open access is involved with a cost in the form of publication fees that need to be paid by the author or the author’s institution to cover the article publishing cost.
Gold open access articles are published in an open access scholarly journal, where the journal will handle hosting and distributing the scholarly articles in such a way that they are freely accessible by all. Gold open access is involved with a cost in the form of publication fees that need to be paid by the author or the author’s institution to cover the article publishing cost.
Origins of Open Access
In the early 2000s, several declarations are issued which made the formal beginnings of the open access movement. They are:
- The Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002)
- The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003)
- The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003)
The policies emphasized those declarations in formation of the core aspects of the modern open access movement. Though some academic disciplines are freely sharing knowledge even before the three issue of declarations, those three declarations has collated open access into a consistent movement.
Why does open access matter?
Processing and redefining the pre-existing knowledge only can set foundation for developing new knowledge. The availability of current scholarly information has a great impact on building the new knowledge where pay-wall restricted scholarly information enable only individuals who can afford the access to make notable contributions further. Subscription academic journals would be very costly sometimes that makes the scholarly research an expensive job for researchers with a controlled research budget.
Most of the academic libraries have subscriptions to many scholarly journals, but the rising costs of journal subscriptions is always a burden for libraries and their budgets. Instead of paying often these exorbitant subscription prices, Open Access research allows anyone with access to the Internet to read the published work. Open Access provides a uniform platform for all where, independent scholars, faculty members of small colleges, major research fellows at universities, everyone could have the same level of access.
Most of the academic libraries have subscriptions to many scholarly journals, but the rising costs of journal subscriptions is always a burden for libraries and their budgets. Instead of paying often these exorbitant subscription prices, Open Access research allows anyone with access to the Internet to read the published work. Open Access provides a uniform platform for all where, independent scholars, faculty members of small colleges, major research fellows at universities, everyone could have the same level of access.
