Open Access

What is access to information?

Access to Information can be defined as the right to seek, receive and impart information held by public bodies. It is an integral part of the fundamental right of freedom of expression, as recognized by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(link is external) (1948), which states that:

The fundamental right of freedom of expression encompasses the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

Access to information is necessary not only for the development of an individual but for the social, cultural, economic and technical development of the country.

Reference: https://en.unesco.org/themes/access-information-laws

What is Open Access?

Open access refers to any publication that is freely available to readers at no cost and has no restrictions/limited restrictions of reuse provided by the open license.

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The free, immediate, online access to scholarly research results and the right to use and reuse those results is necessary for further research. The research output of any country depends upon the availability of resources and reading materials for free or at a lower cost. Open access helps in reaching these goals.

Why Open Access?

• From the author's point of view, it is important as their work gets seen by more and more people.
• In the case of journals, Publication paywalls restrict a substantial amount of research results reach the researchers based on which they keep the foundation of new research. 
• Open Access is free, unrestricted online access to scholarly peer-reviewed publications.
• Open access movement is helping the researchers in developing and least developing countries to have access to the articles that their libraries do not subscribe due to financial issues.
• The research output of any country depends upon the availability of resources and reading materials for free or at a lower cost. Open access helps in reaching these goals.

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How the publications can be made accessible to the public?

• By publishing in open access journals.
• Archiving previously published works in an open access repository or by Self-archiving. 

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Few open access journals

• Open Astronomy
• Canadian Journal of Bioethics
• RSC Advances
• Theory of Computing
• College & Research Libraries
• Scientific Data

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DOAJ (Directory of open access journal) is an online directory of fully open access journals (https://doaj.org/)

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Two categories of Fully Open Access Journals

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• Diamond or platinum open-access journals, which charge no additional publication, open access or article processing fees.

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• Gold open-access journals, which charge publication fees (also called Article Processing Charges)

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Gold Open Access

The category of open access in which the articles are freely and permanently accessible to everyone, immediately after publication. These articles are published under creative commons license and also available to reuse as long as the authors are given proper acknowledgment as the copyrights to their work are retained by authors. These articles can be published in two types of journals.

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Fully open access journal, in which articles are freely available online to everyone to read, usually after the author have paid Article Processing Charges.

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Hybrid journals, which are subscription-based journals and have the option for Gold open access also if an author wish to publish in this category.

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Publishers’ archiving policies

• The scheme of using different colors (Gold, Green, Blue, Yellow, and White) to highlight publishers’ archiving policies was proposed by JISC funded RoMEO ((Rights Metadata for Open archiving) ) project in 2003  under the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), in order to analyze the publishers' open access  policies from around the world and provide information about the self archiving permissions, various  rights and restrictions in standardize and summarized way that publishers impose on their authors.
• These are called different routes of open access related to self-archiving permissions and various restrictions that publishers impose on authors.

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Sherpa RoMEO Database

Sherpa/RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher's policies regarding the self- archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories. RoMEO's own database covers over 22,000 journals. RoMEO also searches the Zetoc, DOAJ, and Entrez databases for additional journals. RoMEO contains publishers' general policies on self-archiving of journal articles and certain conference series. Each entry provides a summary of the publisher's policy, including what version of an article can be deposited, where it can be deposited, and any conditions that are attached to that deposit.

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Welcome to Sherpa Romeo - v2.sherpa

Sherpa Romeo

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https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

Preprints, Postprints and Published version

• Preprint:  A preprint is a full draft version of a scholarly article or research paper before it is peer-reviewed and published in a journal. it can be shared by the author before and after a paper is published in the journal.
• Postprint: A postprint is a final version of a scholarly article or research paper after it is peer-reviewed and incorporated all the reviewers' comments and now ready to be published.
• Published version: The published version is also known as the Version of Record (VoR). This is the version that has been published in a journal in print and/or online. The article will include any copy editing and formatting changes made by the publisher, and is usually available online on their website in PDF or HTML form.

Self Archiving

Self-archiving is the act of (the author's) depositing a free copy of an electronic document online in order to provide open access to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-archiving

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Benefit to Authors

Authors can share their articles publicly in institutional repositories, personal websites, and social sites that target researchers without any restrictions, for the purpose of maximizing its accessibility, usage and citation impact.

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Green Open Access

Green open access is all about the self-archiving permission provided by the publishers to their authors so that they can submit either the preprint or the postprint version of their articles (but before publication in a journal) in institutional repository making it freely accessible to everyone. The copyrights are retained by the publisher and the articles are freely accessible when the embargo period is over (though the embargo period will not apply in all cases.) However, there is a limited restriction on the reuse of work.

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Embargo Period for articles in the journals

Embargo period is length of time imposed by publishers for which authors need to wait to make their articles publicly available (open access). It begins when an article is formally published online in final form (peer-reviewed version), which is the publication date of an article. embargo-lengths can be from 6–12 months or longer from the date of publication of article.

When embargo period expires authors can share their articles publicly in institutional repositories, personal websites, and social sites that target researchers without any restrictions, for the purpose of maximizing its accessibility, usage and citation impact.

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Two types of embargo period

1. which applies for self archiving: Until the embargo period is over authors of articles are restricted to make the final version of their articles to be openly accessible to anyone and anywhere. They cannot deposit their articles (peer-reviewed version) on social platforms, institutional repositories, etc. which is generally done by authors to promote their research. If author submits the article in institutional repository then only metadata will be open to public during embargo period and full text article will be made available when embargo period is over.

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2. which applies to open archive content: Open archive content of publishers have the articles which are freely available to read and download. These articles are added to their archive when their embargo period is over and are open to subscribers and general public.

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Three more routes of Open Access

Blue Open Access: In this authors are allowed to archive only the postprint version of their article.

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Yellow Open Access: In this authors are allowed to archive only the preprint version of their article.

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White Open Access: No archiving is allowed.

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Plan “S” an initiative for Open Access publishing

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Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing launched in 2018, with the aim of making full and immediate access to the research publications a reality by January 2020, It is supported by an international consortium "cOAlition S" currently comprises 13 national research funding organizations and four charitable foundations from 13 countries of European Union who have agreed to implement the 10 principles of Plan S in a coordinated way, together with the support of European Commission and European Research Council (ERC).

Plan S supports Gold route Gold route of Open Access in which the articles are freely and permanently accessible to everyone, immediately after publication.

• https://www.coalition-s.org/
• https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2019/02/plan-s-initiative-for-open-access.html

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Some organizations promoting Open Access

• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

(https://sparcopen.org/)

• OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association) (https://oaspa.org/)
• cOAlition S (https://www.coalition-s.org/about/)
• Open Knowledge Foundation (https://okfn.org/)
• IFLA Open Access Task Force (https://www.ifla.org/news/ifla-open-access-taskforce-established/)

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Thank You

LibCognizance