What is Open Access?
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Open access (OA) is a publishing movement with the goal of making research freely available to the public online. When research is fully open access, it is free for the public to access, read, download, copy, share, and use. This approach to OA was established in 2002 with the Budapest Open Access Initiative and built upon, in 2003, with the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge. |
Venn diagram highlighting the different levels of open access in scholarly publishing, as a function of cost to the readers and authors, copyright retention, and peer review. Adapted from Farquharson, Jamie Ian (2018-07-31). "Introducing Volcanica: The first diamond open-access journal for volcanology". Volcanica 1 (1): i–ix. DOI:10.30909/vol.01.01.i-ix
Diamond Open Access
Diamond Open Access is where the publisher makes research available without a payment requirement from either the author or public. Authors retain their copyright, pay no fees for publication, and the research undergoes peer-review.
Diamond Open Access is also called platinum open access, non-commercial open access, cooperative open access, and open access commons.
Gold Open Access
Gold OA is when research is made available immediately from a publisher. Typically, authors retain their copyright to the research and the publisher licenses the work under Creative Commons licensing. Gold OA may require payment of Author Processing Charges (APCs), which are paid by the researcher, their institution, or a grant, in exchange for making the research available.
Green Open Access
Green OA, or author-self-archiving, is when the author makes an approved version of their research available through an openly accessible repository. Most journals allow the authors to place the accepted manuscript of an article in an OA repository, sometimes after an embargo period.
