What is Open Access?

Open access is the “free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment” (SPARC). Open access can be attained via two primary paths: publishing in an open access journal (Gold) or retaining author’s copyright and posting a copy of the article to an institutional repository or subject repository (Green).

Benefits of open access include:

• Greater visibility and retrievability of research
• Increased impact of scholarship
• Boosts the likelihood that results will be taken up, extended, applied, and cited
• Increased readership outside the academy, including policy-makers, journalists, non-profits, the general public, etc.

Did you know? "A large-scale study of bibliographic data found that open-access research publications—those freely available on the internet—receive more diverse citations compared to paywalled publications, which require a subscription or payment to access. Authors who cite open-access publications (i.e., refer to them in their own scientific work) tend to come from a broader range of institutions, countries, geographic regions, and research fields. The paper was published in Scientometrics." - Vladimir Hedrih for PsyPost.