A publication is considered open access (OA) when anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search for specific elements of content within it and use it in other ways within the scope of a legal agreement. There are different types of OA, and authors can select the form that is most compatible with their needs.

 

OA is transforming the way research is conducted and disseminated. Publishers and researchers alike are increasingly embracing OA considering its advantages over the traditional model of scholarly dissemination.

 

Do you know that as an author, you can benefit from the OA model in numerous ways?

 

A wider audience reads your paper

Have you stumbled across a seminal paper online, only to find that it is behind a paywall? Maybe you do not have institutional access to these journals, and maybe the fee to read such an article is restrictively high. You then search for an archived version of that paper—if available—or sigh and move on to a different (accessible) paper altogether!

 

When you publish an article in an OA journal, more people are likely to see it simply because more people can access it for free.

 

Your research impact increases

Wider access means wider readership. And that translates into more citations. In fact, your overall research impact, far beyond citations, also grows in terms of full-text downloads, unique visitors, overall impressions and altmetrics.

 

You have access to more resources

As an author, you are a reader too. OA is a plus for researchers, who are also consumers of scholarly content themselves. Thus, you can gain considerably from this ‘shareability’ of science, allowing you to build on new research and ideas right away.

Well, that’s not all. OA also benefits the research community as a whole by fostering openness and collaboration in the spirit of furthering science.

 

OA underpins the ‘open science’ movement

Open science (or open research) seeks to make all aspects of research and its dissemination accessible to all. Similarly, there is a thrust toward ‘open data’ because raw research data is important for verification, replication and guiding future investigations. Accessibility and transparency of research and data are key to attaining this ideal.

 

Such ‘openness’ is crucial in the face of global crises that warrant immediacy of information dissemination. What better example of this than the recent pandemic! The COVID-19 pandemic marked a dramatic shift in how research findings were communicated and shared. Publishers across the board made COVID-19–related content OA. Open publishing platforms and preprint servers also played a vital role in accelerating the spread of crucial findings.1

 

OA facilitates collaborative research

No researcher should be excluded from the opportunity to participate in academic discourse. OA allows researchers from low-income countries to access research findings and publish their work for a global audience. OA promotes collaboration by means of data sharing, transparency and attribution, across borders of any kind.

 

OA permits the re-use of published material

To re-use any material published in a traditional journal, you need to seek permission from the copyright holder (typically the publisher, not the author). In contrast, OA journals use Creative Commons licences, which allow the re-use of material as long as the original author is attributed.

 

OA and the way forward
The merits of OA go beyond just the academic community. Recent global events attest to the need for more openness in research. The increasing adoption of OA by authors and publishers looks promising, and in coming years, OA might well be the norm rather than the exception!

 

Reference

 

1.    Kiley, R. (2020). Three lessons COVID-19 has taught us about Open Access publishing. LSE Impact Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/10/06/39677/

Share with your colleagues