OA Resources

• Articles about Open Access
• Organizations and individuals advocating for Open Access
• Some examples of Open Access journals and repositories
• Open Access and Research Impact: A Brief Bibliography

Articles about Open Access

• Periodicals Price Survey 2008: Embracing Openness: Global initiatives and startling successes hint at the profound implications of open access on journal publishing, Library Journal, 4/15/2008, by Lee C. Van Orsdel and Kathleen Born.
• A Quiet Revolt Puts Costly Journals on Web, Pamela Burdman, New York Times, 6/26/2004
• The Promise and Peril of ‘Open Access.’ Chronicle of Higher Education.1/30/ 2004, by Lila Guterman.
• The Case for Open Access. Harvard Crimson, 2/12/2008, by Robert Darnton.

Organizations and individuals advocating for Open Access

• The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
• Dr. Ted Bergstrom’s Journal Pricing Page - UCSB Economics Department
• Open Access News: News from the open access movement

Some examples of Open Access journals and repositories

• PLos Biology – A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal Published by the Public Library of Science
• arXiv – an open access archive of pre-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology and Statistics.
• Open Humanities Press – an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory
• Southern Spaces, an interdisciplinary journal about the regions, places and culture of the American South, published out of the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory and Woodruff Library
• Molecular Vision: Biology and Genetics in Vision Research, published out of the Emory Eye Center
• Practical Matters: a transdisciplinary multimedia journal of religious practices and practical theology, published out of the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory

Open Access and Research Impact: A Brief Bibliography

Antelman, K. (2004) Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?. Coll Res Libr 2004; 65:372-382. The author looks at articles in mathematics, electrical and electronic engineering, political science, and philosophy, and finds that Open Access articles do seem to have greater research impact.

Craig ID, Plume AM, McVeigh ME, Pringle J, Amin M. Do open access articles have greater citation impact? Coll Res Libr 2004; 65:372-82. A critical review of recent studies on Open Access and research impact. Requires PDF.

Davis PM, Lewenstein BV, Simon DH, Booth JG, Connolly MJL. Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomized controlled trial. BMJ 2008; 337; a568. In a randomized trial, the authors found that Open Access articles were downloaded more often than subscription access articles, but that after one year they were not cited more than subscription access articles.

Eysenbach G. Citation advantage of open access articles. PLoS Biol 2006; 4:e157. The author, using a one-journal sample, offers evidence that Open Access are cited more often than subscription access articles.

Harnad, S. Davis et al’s 1-year Study of Self-Selection Bias: No Self-Archiving Control, No OA Effect, No Conclusion. Open Access Archivangelism blog, July 31, 2008. A critique of the methodology of the 2008 Davis et al study above.

Lawrence, S. Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature, 31 May 2001. One of the first papers presenting data that suggests online publication increases the impact of research.

Norris M, Oppenheim C, Rowland F. Open Access Citation Rates and Developing Countries. 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing, Toronto, June 25-27. The authors admit that the numbers of citations from authors in developing countries are very small, but they seem to show a higher proportion of citations of Open Access scholarship than citations from developed countries.

Open Access Issues in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Antelman, Kristin (2004) Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?. College & Research Libraries News 65(5):pp. 372-382. Open Access articles have a greater research impact that those that are not freely available in four fields, including political science and philosophy.

Hutcheon, Linda, “What Open Access Could Mean For the Humanities,” Wednesday, 13 September. Open Access offers the humanities a chance for a potentially transformative rethinking of what constitutes scholarship.

Suber, Peter, “Promoting Open Access in the Humanities.” Originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in San Francisco, January 3, 2004. Open Access has been a tough sell in the humanities for multiple reasons, and this is what can be done about it.

Unsworth, John, “The Crisis of Audience.” Delivered as part of the SPARC session, "Scholarly Communication in the Humanities: Does Open Access Apply?" at the Annual Meeting of the American Library Association Orlando, FL, Saturday, June 26, 2004. Open Access might be one solution to the overall problem of slow book sales in the humanities.

Zell, Hans, "The Rise and Rise of Journal Prices in African Studies, " Africana Libraries Newsletter, June/Sept. 2003, p.7-9. Prices of journals in African studies have gone up, making it more important for Africana libraries in the North to support less-expensive African journals.