Open access (OA) literature: what is it?

Abstract

O pen access (OA) refers to the practice of making digital content freely available online. While digital content can mean a variety of things, it most commonly refers to peer-reviewed scholarly research articles but has increasingly included a wider dissemination of scholarly pursuits such as monographs, papers, dissertations, technical/project reports, presentations, and data. Peter Suber, current director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard University and one of the leading pioneers of the OA movement, defines OA literature as “digital, online, free of charge for everyone with an internet connection, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” With a recent interest in OA over the past several years by faculty and researchers alike, it is interesting to note that OA publishing dates back to the 1990s when journal subscription prices began skyrocketing and the need for different business models became apparent. At that time, professional publishing organizations and independent publishers (scientists/scholars) began working together to develop a business model to support OA. As OA emerged as a new publishing model as an attempt to support publishing organizations and scientists/scholars, it is today an established process of delivering scientific communication with support from the government and researcher funders as opposed to subscription fees. Several options are available for authors to consider when making their scholarly pursuits OA to others: OA journals (“Gold” OA), OA repositories (“Green” OA), or OA options with traditional, subscription journals (Hybrid OA). Authors publishing in an OA journal (Gold QA) have their scholarly work accepted to a specific OA journal with the article uploaded to the publisher’s website. An OA journal may or may not charge a publisher’s fee. A common misunderstanding is that all OA journals use an “author-pays” type business model. This is not true. While some OA journals require a publication fee, it is the author’s employer or funder (sponsor of the research) who sometimes pays the fee. In some situations, publication fees are waived or universities maintain funds to pay fees on behalf of faculty/researchers that choose to publish in fee-based OA journals. Another common misunderstanding is that articles in OA journals are not peer-reviewed or peer-reviewed to a lesser extent. OA and limited peer review are totally separate issues. With the publishing community having a vested interest in OA, issues of quality (rigorous peer-review process) are of paramount importance to ensure the overall publishing system remain stable. Authors publishing in OA repositories (Green QA), sometimes referred to as “self-archiving,” have their scholarly work placed in a repository organized by discipline (eg, OpenMed@NIC, including biomedical, medical informatics, dental, nursing, and pharmaceutical sciences) or institution (eg, eScholarship at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester). Institutional repositories are developed and maintained by librarians who are active players in helping create a culture of OA in their respective institutions, thus supporting the core value of access to information. OA repositories do not perform peer review themselves. However, they generally host scholarly works peer-reviewed elsewhere.