Research Guides: Open Access: Introduction to OA

More About OA

Open Access Overview
By Peter Suber.
Open Access Webinars
Archived webinars from Open Access Academy.

Open Access by Peter Suber
Call Number: ONLINE; 070.57973 Su15o
ISBN: 9780262517638
Publication Date: 2012-07-20
In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold.

OA Guides

How Open Is It?
A guide from SPARC for evaluating the openness of journals.
Open Access Spectrum Evaluation Tool
The Open Access Spectrum (OAS) Evaluation Tool quantitatively scores journals' degrees of openness.

Open Access (OA) refers to academic literature that is available free of access barriers, and often free of copyright and licensing restrictions. Authors designate their products as OA primarily through publishing in OA journals (referred as gold OA), or self-archiving in institutional or disciplinary repositories (green OA).

Source: Peter Suber, A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access

OA vs OER: What's the difference?

Open Access (OA) focuses primarily on scholarly literature like articles and monographs. Open Educational Resources (OER) typically refers to learning objects, including textbooks, lesson plans, syllabi, lectures, and course modules.

Source: Sarah Crissinger, Openness: Introduction

OA Informational Handouts

SPARC Open Access Fact Sheet [PDF]
Open Access Week: Handouts
Includes overview handout, plus handouts for faculty, librarians, research funders, and universities and administrators.

Learn OA

UNESCO Open Access Curriculua
UNESCO offers sets of OA curricula for researchers and library and information professionals based on the particular needs of each.