Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.
While OA is a newer form of scholarly publishing, many OA journals comply with well-established peer-review processes and maintain high publishing standards. For more information, see Peter Suber's overview of Open Access.
Types of Open Access (OA)
Green OA publishing refers to the self-archiving of published or pre-publication works for free public use. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional or disciplinary archive such as Sycamore Scholars or arXiv.org.
Gold OA publishing refers to works published in an open access journal and accessed via the journal or publisher's website. Examples of Gold OA include PLOS (Public Library of Science) and BioMed Central.
Hybrid OA offer authors the option of making their articles open access via an author's publishing fee (APC). APC costs vary from publisher to publisher. Journals that offer hybrid OA are still fundamentally subscription journals with an open access option for individual articles.
Diamond OA publishing describes journals that are completely free to publish and to read. The cost of maintaining and publishing the journal is usually borne by the organization that sponsors the journal. Diamond OA status has no impact on the journal's peer review process. By making articles completely free to both publish and to read, Diamond OA best approaches the goals of democratizing and widely distributing academic scholarship.
