What is Open Access?
"Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." - Peter Suber
Why Open Access?
"Funders invest in research in order to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, encourage innovation, enrich education, and stimulate the economy – to improve the public good. They recognize that broad access to the results of research is an essential component of the research process itself. Research advances only through sharing of results, and the value of an investment in research is only maximized through wide use of its results." - SPARC
Open Access Resources
Ways to Get Involved:
- Right to Research Coalition
- Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
- Creative Commons
Open Access Publishing - Tools and Help:
- Sherpa/ROMEO
Search publisher copyright policies - Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals - Keep Your Copyrights: A Resource for Creators
Designed to help creators hold on to their copyrights and to license their rights on author-friendly terms. Written by legal academics at Columbia Law School. - SPARC Author Addendum
Secure your rights as the author of a journal article.
Policy Development:
- Harvard's Model Open-Access Policy (PDF)
The following is a model open-access policy in the Harvard style — with a freely waivable rights-retaining license and a deposit requirement. This language is based on and informed by the policies voted by several Harvard faculties, as well as MIT, Stanford University School of Education, Duke University, and others - Harvard's Good Practices for University Open-Access Policies
Developed by the Harvard Open Access Project - this is a guide to good practices for university open-access (OA) policies.
Frequently Asked Questions and (Myth-Busting) Regarding Open Access