International Open Access Week is October 22 – 28, 2018!
“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.” – Peter Suber, A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access
As a scholar, why should you support and participate in open access publishing models?
#1: Open Access is Global Access
The open access movement has the potential to equalize access to research, particularly in what’s sometimes called the Global South (Africa, Latin America, and developing countries in Asia), where articles and research papers are often firewalled in costly journals and subscription databases. Open access tools also allow researchers around the world to share their findings more readily. UVM’s own open access publishing platform, ScholarWorks @ UVM, is accessed by scholars around the world.
#2: Changing the scholarly system
In the current scholarly publishing model, lots of academic research is only available in subscription journals and databases. The costs of these resources inflates at sometimes exorbitant rates – as much as 5% to 15% -- and academic libraries struggle to keep up with these costs. Individuals without academic affiliations are left in the dark about significant scientific and scholarly findings. Open access publishing models provide a means to get research findings from scholar to scholar, researcher to researcher, without the intervention of for-profit publishers.
#3: Making non-traditional research visible
Open access publishing tools provide a means to share research that is less likely to appear in a traditional, peer-reviewed journal, but that still has significant value. This might include student research, presentation, theses and dissertations, creative works, white papers, and technical reports.
#4: A tool to show your reach
Open access publishing platforms can provide useful metrics to demonstrate the reach of your scholarship, beyond the “impact factor,” with robust data on views and downloads. It makes it easier to share your research with a persistent URL and preservation access standards. These can be helpful tools for scholars in employment searches and in the reappointment, promotion, and tenure process.
#5: All formats welcome
Open access publishing platforms can support many formats – from traditional, text-based works to audio/visual materials to data sets.
Get involved!
Want to make your research more available through ScholarWorks @ UVM? It’s the five-year anniversary of this open access platform, which serves as both an institutional repository of UVM’s scholarly output and a publishing tool for open access journals. Contact Fred Pond to learn more.