Scholarly Publishing

Open Access (OA) is a concept that refers to literature and information made freely available in a digital format online. This is most often used when talking about open access publishing, but it can also include other forms of information such as research datasets. Scholarly works published open access are offered free of charge to readers and typically are published with copyright and licenses that contain less restrictions for sharing and reuse for readers and authors.

There are multiple models of open access publishing, though they largely fall into three categories.

Gold Open Access

Gold open access is a form of open access publishing where the fine published version of an article is available open to the public and is reusable and sharable immediately.

Green Open Access

Green open access is a form of open access publishing where the published version is not open to the public, but the author can self-archive a preprint copy in a repository or on their personal website, possibly after an embargo period.

Hybrid Open Access

Hybrid open access is a form of open access publishing that utilizes a combination of Gold and Green open access techniques by allowing authors to make their article open access in what would otherwise be a subscription journal.

Variants of Open Access

There are a few other variant terms talking about Open Access publishing models that you may come across as well.

Bronze Open Access

Where a publisher allows for free reading of articles but provides no clear reuse licensing information.

Diamond/Platinum Open Access

This is a variant term sometimes used to refer to Gold Open Access publications that do not charge a processing fee as they have external or alternate funding to support the publication.

Black Open Access

While not a commonly used term it is a combination of Open Access with the concept of the Black Market. It refers to the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials via social media platforms and specific sites dedicated to such distribution. This mode is neither legal nor supported or endorsed by the University.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) - An open access advocacy group with a number of resources to support open access publishing, open education, and open data

Sherpa Romeo - A database that tracks publisher and journal copyright and self-archiving policies

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) - A community-curated online directory of open access, peer-reviewed journals

DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) - A community-driven discovery service of scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books

OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) - A community-curated online directory of open repositories

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