Open Access (OA) is defined as the free, immediate, and online availability of research publications (e.g., books, article) or other research outputs (e.g., data). Supporters of OA state the open and unhindered availability of information will promote further research, encourage new creations, and improve lives.
Why OA? According to open-access organization SPARC and its affiliates, the OA movement is a response to new ways information is used, its availability, and its means of being distributed.
This business model was increasingly scrutinized during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of the research needed to support new discoveries in response to the pandemic was subscription-based or behind paywalls until some publishers either temporarily lifted these, or made some research tied to COVID-19 openly available during the first year of the pandemic.
Did you know...
...scholarly publishing companies are more profitable than those in tech and energy?
...Open Access emerged as a response to the increasing costs of scholarly journal and publications while library budgets remained flat or found decreases in their funding.
...Open Access aims to make scholarly work that is funded by universities and grants more widely available.
...Open Access also purports to give scholars and creators more permissions to reuse their research and creative works, to help them keep more of their rights to their work.
Image source: Jill Cirasella and Les LaRue, permission by CC-BY-SA.
SHB Online (2019). What is open access? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne8kTJ0-fEM
Background and Development of OA
Various governmental, scholarly, and professional organizations from around the world have published statements in support of OA. See the following for seminal statements.
Open Access in the FAU Libraries Collections
Search OneSearch to find Open Access books, journals and other works. Many of our journals provide hybrid Open Access to their articles, meaning that some of their articles are openly and freely available without a subscription.
Look for the OA logo (orange padlock) for those and other available publications! Also, the Libraries' A - Z database provides Open Access sources:
FAU Libraries Open Access Repository and Publications
Florida Atlantic University Libraries
777 Glades Road
Boca Raton, FL 33431
(561) 297-6911