This guide has been edited from Boston College University Libraries and is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) defines "open access" as follows:
By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
In addition to benefiting consumers of scholarly information, open access also benefits scholars, increasing the visibility, influence, and potential benefit of their research. It helps redress global inequity of access to scholarship by dismantling cost barriers to research dissemination. And it returns research results more swiftly and readily to the public, who provide much of the funding for scholarly work.
"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder." From Peter Suber's Very brief introduction to Open Access.
Content by Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen. Produced in partnership with the Right to Research Coalition, the Scholarly Publishing and Resources Coalition and the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students.
License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
This information is summarized from a Boston College Libraries Newsletter (Spring 2011) article.
Myth: Open Access is a subversive movement that will ultimately undermine our copyright system.
Fact: Open Access works entirely within our current copyright system. Your work as an author is copyrighted to you the moment you fix it in a tangible medium of expression (typing it into Word and clicking Save, for example). You retain that copyright until you give some or all of it away.
Myth: Open Access will destroy the scholarly publishing system and cause journals to fail.
Fact: New models are emerging in scholarly publishing. One safeguard that many journals implement is a time-limited embargo on open access. Journals recoup most of the publishing costs within the first year of publication. Articles can then be made open access without loss of revenue. Many journal publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, Wiley, Sage, etc.) have also decided to change their business model from subscription-only, cost-recovery, to a hybrid model, in which open access articles are published alongside traditional ones. Article processing fees are charged to recoup the publishers' costs. Hybrid journal policies should be examined carefully, however; some allow free access to the article but do not allow any of the derivative uses associated with true open access. See "When is Open Access Not Open Access?"
Myth: Open Access journals are not peer-reviewed and are of low quality.
Fact: Open Access journals, just like any other journal, can be peer-reviewed or not, depending on the journal policy. The fact that the journal is open access says nothing about whether it is peer-reviewed. Most scholarly open access journals are peer-reviewed.
Myth: If I try to retain some rights, publishers will think I am difficult and will not want to publish my work.
Fact: Publishers are very used to dealing with these requests at this point. Far from being unusual, the retention of rights by authors is becoming a mainstream choice. Approximately 60% of academic journals allow some form or open access archiving without any use of an addendum to the contract. For a searchable database of publisher policies about copyright and archiving, explore the SHERPA/RoMEO site.
Myth: Publishing my work open access is a nice, altruistic thing to do, but there is nothing in it for me.
Fact: Open access publishing does help address inequities in access to knowledge globally. Few people in the world have access to the resources we have here at Boston College. But, in addition, most studies show a clear citation advantage for open access publications. Open access publications are cited more often than those that are subscription-only and citation counts are still important factors in tenure and promotion decisions.
Peter Suber, a prominent OA advocate and activist, currently at the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society at Harvard University, has written extensively about the perils of OA myths:
