October 24th to 30th is the fourth annual international Open Access week! So what exactly is “Open Access”?

October 24 to 30 is the fourth annual international Open Access Week.  So what exactly is ‘Open Access?’ 

“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” –Peter Suber, A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access 

Users of open access materials can access these materials from anywhere in the world with no subscription or license barriers. The speed and simplicity of distribution on the internet makes open access possible, and open access scholarship offers the potential for broader exposure of an author’s work.  In recent years, the cost of subscriptions to scholarly journals has increased significantly. As costs increase, more researchers are being priced out of access to journals because their institutions cannot afford to subscribe.

The lack of access to scholarly materials for some researchers is particularly unfortunate as the enduring goal of a university is to create and disseminate knowledge. Emory’s vision is to become

“A destination university internationally recognized as an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged, and diverse community, whose members work collaboratively for positive transformation in the world through courageous leadership in teaching, research, scholarship, health care, and social action.”

-- Emory Strategic Plan, Where Courageous Inquiry Leads: 2005-2015

An approach to create positive transformation through scholarship is for Emory faculty to make their research available as open access. By making Emory faculty scholarship freely accessible everywhere, we raise the visibility of this work, and we further the intellectual community here at Emory.  Emory Library is building an institutional open access repository to showcase faculty authored articles in response to an Open Access Policy passed by Faculty Council .  For more information about the development of this open access repository, see http://guides.main.library.emory.edu/OA.  Also, Emory has a growing open access repository of over 1,500 electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) by Emory graduate students available at https://etd.library.emory.edu/

Emory faculty and students publish several open access journals, including Southern Spaces, Practical Matters, Methodist Review, Molecular Vision, Religion Dispatches, Non-Site, and Spenser Review. Open access Journals are freely available on the internet, and frequently do not require authors to transfer copyright to the journal.  Some open access journals require an author’s fee to publish an article.  To search for an open access journal in your discipline, consult the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/). 

Some publishers, such as Cornell University Press, offer open access versions of books, with the option to purchase a copy to be printed on demand.

The Emory Libraries encourage your participation and involvement in open access.  For more information on open access at Emory see http://web.library.emory.edu/OA-publishing-at-emory