26 February 2010

What is Open Access?

Open Access is the immediate, online, free availability of research outputs without restrictions on use commonly imposed by publisher copyright agreements. Open Access includes the outputs that scholars normally give away for free for publication; it includes peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers and datasets of various kinds. Open Access provides the means to maximise the visibility and availability, and thus the uptake and use, of research outputs.

Why Open Access?

Access to knowledge, information, and data is essential in higher education and research; and more generally, for sustained progress in society. Access can be greatly improved. The digitising of research results and digital publication in recent decades represents a fundamental shift away from the “age of paper”. Improved access is the basis for the transfer of knowledge (teaching), knowledge generation (research), and knowledge valorisation (civil society). The central idea is that the results of publicly financed research should be available to the public.

It has been widely acknowledged that the journal subscription system that has been predominant in the last decades does not provide the wide, easy dissemination of research results that is wanted. It hampers the efficiency of the scientific research process, and the effective use and impact of public grant money. Even if a journal is available online, this does not mean it is freely available: university libraries pay large subscriptions to allow their academics to easily access journal materials online. Annual price increases that are many times the rate of inflation aggravate the situation. Matters are even worse in the developing world, where journal subscription prices mean that many institutions simply cannot afford access to up-to-date research. Some publishers do take special measures for such cases, but this is just dealing with the symptoms rather than with the cause of the problem.

Open Access addresses these problems by taking the results of research that has already been paid for and making it freely available online, through repositories, open access journals and websites. This process can provide significant advantages for individual authors, for researchers, for institutions and for the research process generally by freeing up the dissemination process. Many funders have recognised that the job of research is only half done if the results of that research cannot reach the widest audience – including small businesses, science journalists, practitioners and the general public wishing to stay informed. In Europe, it has led to the EC Open Access Pilot and the ERC Guidelines on Open Access supported by the OpenAIRE project.

Pros and Cons of Open Access

Major advantages of open access are the free availability of research results, high visibility and increased use and citation. It also gives authors more control over their own publications. More information on the pros of Open Access is available here.

There are also reservations about Open Access. It has been suggested for example, that it interferes with peer-review. This is not the case. Open Access repositories supplement and do not replace journals. The EC Open Access Pilot explicitly asks for the final, peer-reviewed and revised version of the article. Furthermore, some authors have feared that wider availability will increase plagiarism: in fact, if anything, Open Access serves to reduce plagiarism. When material is freely available the chance that plagiarism is recognised and exposed is much higher. More information on reservations about Open Access can be found here.

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