Open Access Pdf
Open
Access
Open the channels of
communication in your field
Access scientific and
scholarly research
•
online
•
free of charge
•
free of licensing restrictions
Association of College and Research Libraries
www.ala.org/acrl
Association of Research Libraries
www.arl.org
SPARC
www.arl.org/sparc
SPARC Europe
www.sparceurope.org
Open
Access
Open access will
accelerate research.
You know first-hand that scientists and scholars are not paid for their journal
articles. In most cases, you must transfer copyright to a journal before it will
publish your work. While you might receive royalties for your books and
software, your compensation for journal articles is more abstract: your field
advances and your career develops.
If you’re giving up your royalties and intellectual property rights, shouldn’t
readers be the beneficiaries? By removing price and permission barriers,
open access makes your work easier to use. Open access serves your interests
as the author and the interests of all potential readers.
In the age of print, open access was physically and economically impossible.
But thanks to the Internet, it’s an emerging reality. Now, the tradition of
producing journal articles without expectation of payment combined with
electronic publishing offers an unprecedented public good: the free online
availability of peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly journal articles.
Think about what this kind of distribution will mean for the enlargement of
your audience, the widespread sharing of knowledge, and the acceleration of
research. Open-access archives and journals are both practical and lawful.
Implementations around the world are proving that they surpass traditional
subscription-based journals in their cost-effectiveness and service to science
and scholarship.
Join the growing, worldwide movement to bring
the benefits of open access to all.
Open
Access
Open access increases
research impact.
100%
1 9 9 7 – 1 9 9 8
In 1997–1998, 85 percent of the most
1 9 9 5 – 1 9 9 6
highly cited articles were open access.
90%
1 9 9 3 – 1 9 9 4
Articles with lower citation impact were
1 9 9 1 – 1 9 9 2
more likely to be restricted access.
80%
1 9 8 9 – 1 9 9 0
70%
AILABLE ONLINE
V
Y A
60%
50%
40%
30%
AGE OF ARTICLES FREEL
20%
PERCENT
10%
0% 0
1
2– 3
4–7
8–15
16–31
32–63
64–127
N U M B E R O F C I TAT I O N S
Steve Lawrence, a scientist at NEC Research Institute, analyzed nearly 120,000
computer science articles cited in a standard disciplinary bibliography. When he
looked at articles with successively higher levels of impact or citations, he found
successively higher percentages of open-access articles, and vice versa. He found
the strength of this correlation steadily increased over a decade.
source:
Steve Lawrence, “Online or Invisible?” Nature, Vol. 411, No. 6837, p. 521, 2001.
http: //www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/
Open
Access
Why should you care
How can you provide open
about open access?
access to your work?
As an author
Submit your work to open-access journals. There are
You will have a larger potential audience than any
over 1000 peer-reviewed journals listed in the
subscriber-restricted journal can give you, even the
Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org), and
most prestigious. Open access can increase the
new journals appear online every month.
impact of your work, shorten the delay between
Deposit your preprints in an open digital archive
acceptance and publication, and make your articles
hosted by your institution or discipline. For a list, see
more effective by making them easier to find and
www.arl.org/sparc/repos. If your publisher permits it,
use. Your work will be visible to every search and
deposit your postprint (the revised version, as
retrieval tool.
published in the journal) in an open archive.
As a reader
If you submit your work to a subscription-based
You will have free online access to the literature
journal, retain your rights — and the rights of your
necessary for your research.
readers — by attaching the SPARC “author’s
As a teacher
addendum” (www.arl.org/sparc/author) to the
You will know that your students have convenient
publisher’s copyright form. If the journal will not
access to the information they need. With open-
consent to this, be persistent. The discussion will
access literature, the author or copyright holder has
help the publisher understand what matters to
given permission in advance for making and
authors. Make sure you can put the postprint on
distributing copies. No more delays, doubts, or fees.
your personal website — or better yet, in an open
No more fair-use judgment calls, fear of liability,
digital archive hosted by your institution or
and painful decisions to err on the side of caution
discipline.
and non-use.
If you submit your work to a subscription-based
As a scientist or scholar
journal, offer to pay the costs of providing open
You will be coming to grips with a journal
online access. A growing number of journals accept
publishing system that is no longer sustainable.
this as a way to experiment with the methods and
Despite the opportunity for expanded global sharing
economics of open-access publishing. Other
of knowledge brought by the Internet, prices of many
journals are waiting to be asked.
journals have spiraled out of control and libraries
have had no choice but to cancel subscriptions, defer
new subscriptions, and cut into their book budgets.
There are many potential solutions to this crisis, but
open access is the most effective. And it is within the
reach of scientists and scholars.
Open
Access
How can you help the
cause of open access?
If your institution or discipline doesn’t already host
Help your library make intelligent decisions about
an open digital archive, help launch one. Open-
subscriptions and cancellations by having a discussion
source software exists to help you create and
about the real value of scholarly journals. Librarians
maintain them.
often feel pressured to take actions that perpetuate the
Help launch an open-access journal in your field.
pricing crisis by subscribing to journals whose price
Open-source journal management software can
may not be a true reflection of their size, quality, impact,
automate clerical tasks and keep costs down.
or usage.
Serve on the editorial board or referee papers for an
Educate colleagues and the next generation of scientists
open-access journal.
and scholars. You can prevent damaging myths or
alarmist claims about open access from circulating
When sitting on grant-review panels or hiring,
without challenge. Open access is compatible with peer
tenure, or promotion committees, give due weight to
review, copyright, and career advancement.
peer-reviewed publications regardless of their price
or medium. And don’t rely only on prestige or
impact factor — this discriminates against new
journals that may be of high quality.
Help your professional associations understand
open access. Serve on their committees and
governing boards, and write opinion pieces for their
newsletters. Nudge them into adopting open access
for their own journals and endorsing open access for
other journals in the field.
If you are a journal editor, encourage your publisher
to adopt an open-access business model. If the
publisher is unwilling and pursues policies that
restrict access, consider following the example of
journals in disciplines such as biology and
mathematics by “declaring independence.” Along
with the rest of your editorial board, resign from
the journal and launch a new, open-access journal to
serve the same niche. Organizations such as SPARC
can aid you in this transition.
Open
Access
Open access facts
For more information
Astronomy researchers who made their
To find out more about these issues, visit the Create
Astrophysical Journal article open access using
Change website at www.createchange.org.
the arXiv.org e-print server doubled the citation
To obtain additional copies of this brochure, e-mail:
rate of their articles.
pubs@arl.org.
source: Stevens-Rayburn, Sarah. Account of 2003 AAS Publication Board meeting email to
PAM electronic discussion list, November 13, 2003. http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?
A2=ind0311&L=pamnet&D=1&O=D&P=1632
Scientists who chose the open access option when
they published in Limnology and Oceanography had
approximately three times more downloads of their
articles from that journal’s website.
source: American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.
http://aslo.org/lo/information/freeaccess.html
ommons Attribution License
reative C
atercolor by Kevin Osborn © 2004
©2004 SPARC. Distributed under the terms
of the C
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/
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