Open access
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'''Open access''' ('''OA''') is free, immediate, permanent, full-text, [[online]] access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and scholarly material,<ref>[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm Peter Suber, Open Access Overview (definition, introduction)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> primarily [[research]] articles published in [[peer-review]]ed journals. OA means that any individual user, anywhere, who has access to the Internet, may link, read, download, store, print-off, use, and data-mine the digital content of that article. An OA article usually has limited copyright and licensing restrictions.
''The first major international'' statement on open access<ref>[http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml Budapest Open Access Initiative<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> was the [[Budapest Open Access Initiative]] in February 2002<ref>[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm Budapest Open Access Initiative, FAQ<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. This provided a definition of open access, and has a growing list of signatories<ref>[http://www.soros.org/openaccess/view.cfm Budapest Open Access Initiative<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. Two further statements followed: the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing<ref>[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> in June 2003 and the [[Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities]] in October 2003.
OA has since become the subject of much discussion amongst [[researcher]]s, academics, [[librarians]], [[university]] administrators, [[funding agency|funding agencies]], government officials, commercial [[publisher]]s, and [[learned society|society]] publishers. Although there is substantial (though not universal) agreement on the concept of OA itself, there is considerable debate and discussion about the economics of funding [[peer review]] in [[open access publishing]], and the reliability and economic effects of [[self-archiving]].
There are two main currents in the open access movement:
# In '''[[Self-archiving|OA self-archiving]]''' (also known as the "green" road to OA <ref>[http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2004.09.013]</ref> <ref>[http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml Budapest Open Access Initiative<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>), authors publish in a [[subscription]] journal, but in addition make their articles freely accessible online, usually by depositing them in either an [[institutional repository|institutional]] [[repository]]<ref>[http://roar.eprints.org/?action=home&q=&country=&version=&type=institutional&order=name&submit=Filter Browse Research Institutional or Departmental (ROAR)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> (such as the [[Okayama University]] Digital Information Repository<ref>[http://eprints.lib.okayama-u.ac.jp/ eprints - Welcome to eprints@OUDIR<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>) or in a central repository<ref>[http://roar.eprints.org/?action=home&q=&country=&version=&type=subject&order=name&submit=Filter Browse Research Cross-Institutional (ROAR)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> (such as [[PubMed Central]]). The deposit can be in the form of a peer-reviewed [[postprint]] or a non-peer-reviewed [[preprint]]. OA self-archiving was first formally proposed in 1994<ref>[http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html Association of Research Libraries :: Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> <ref>[http://www.infotoday.com/it/oct04/poynder.shtml Poynder On Point: Ten Years After<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> by [[Stevan Harnad]]. However, self-archiving was already being done by computer scientists in their local [[FTP]] archives in the '80s<ref>[http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/6519.html American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum: Re: when did the Open Access movement "officially" begin<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>, later harvested into [[Citeseer]]. High-energy physicists have been self-archiving centrally in [[arXiv]] since 1991.
# In '''[[open access publishing|OA publishing]]''' (also known as the "gold" road to OA <ref>[http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2004.09.013]</ref>) authors publish in '''[[open access journal]]s''' that make their articles freely accessible online immediately upon publication. Examples of OA publishers<ref>[http://www.doaj.org/ Directory of open access journals<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> are [[BioMed Central]] and the [[Public Library of Science]].
There are about 20-25,000 peer-reviewed journals in all<ref>[http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/ ulrichsweb.com(TM) - The Global Source for Periodicals<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> across all disciplines, countries and languages. About 10 - 15% of them are OA journals, as indexed by the [[Directory of Open Access Journals]] (gold OA). Of the more than 10,000 peer-reviewed non-OA journals indexed in the Romeo directory of publisher policies<ref>[http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php Journal Policies - Summary Statistics So Far<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> (which includes most of the journals indexed by Thomson/ISI<ref>[http://isiwebofknowledge.com/ Web of Knowledge - ISI Web of Knowledge<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>), over 90% endorse some form of author self-archiving (green OA): 62% endorse self-archiving the author's final peer-reviewed draft or "postprint," 29% the pre-refereeing "preprint."<ref>[http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php Journal Policies - Summary Statistics So Far<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
==Authors and researchers==
The main reason authors make their articles openly accessible is to maximize their [[impact factor|research impact]]. A study in 2001 first reported an Open Access [[citation impact]] advantage<ref>[http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/online-nature01/ Online or Invisible? [Steve Lawrence; NEC Research Institute]<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>, and a growing number of studies <ref>[http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html Effect of open access on citation impact: a bibliography of studies<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> have confirmed, with varying degrees of methodological rigor, that an open access article is more likely to be used and cited than one behind subscription barriers.<ref>[http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html Effect of open access on citation impact: a bibliography of studies<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> For example, a 2006 study in ''[[PLoS Biology]]'' found that articles published as immediate open access in the ''[[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|PNAS]]'' were three times more likely to be cited than non-open access papers, and were also cited more than ''PNAS'' articles that were only self-archived<ref>[http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157 PLoS Biology - Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>.
Scholars are paid by research funders and/or their universities to do research; the published article is the report of the work they have done, rather than an item for commercial gain. The more the article is used, cited, applied and built upon, the better for research as well as for the researcher's career. <ref>[http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/28-guid.html Maximising the Return on the UK's Public Investment in Research - Open Access Archivangelism<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> <ref>http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v11p354y1988.pdf</ref>
Authors who wish to make their work openly accessible have two options. One is to publish in an open access journal. An open access journal may or may not charge a processing fee; open access publishing does not necessarily mean that the author has to pay. Traditionally, many academic journals levied page charges, long before open access became a possibility. When OA journals do charge processing fees, it is the author's employer or research funder who typically pays the fee, not the individual author, and many journals will waive the fee in cases of financial hardship, or for authors in less-developed countries.
The other option is author self-archiving. To find out if a publisher or journal has given its green light to author self-archiving, the author can check the Publisher Copyright Policies and Self-Archiving list<ref>[http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php SHERPA/RoMEO - Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> on the [[SHERPA (organisation)|SHERPA]] RoMEO web site. To find out by journal, the author can check the EPrints Romeo site<ref>[http://romeo.eprints.org/ Journal Policies - Self-Archiving Policy By Journal<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>, which is built on an interpretation of the SHERPA/RoMEO dataset. There is a self-archiving FAQ.<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/self-faq Self-Archiving FAQ<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> A [[wiki]] designed to help faculty understand and start doing self-archiving has also been set up by Ari Friedman.<ref>[http://selfarchive.org/index.php/Main_Page]</ref> Extensive details and links can also be found in the Open Access Archivangelism blog<ref>[http://openaccess.eprints.org/ Open Access Archivangelism<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> and the Eprints Open Access site.<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/ Open Access<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
The idea of [[open content]] is related to open access. However, open content is usually defined to include the general permission to ''modify'' a given work. Open access refers only to free and unrestricted availability without any further implications. In scientific publishing it is usual to keep an article's content static and to associate it with a fixed author.
While open access is currently focused on scholarly [[scientific literature|research articles]], any content creator who wishes to can share work openly, and decide how to make their content available. [[Creative Commons]] provides a number of licenses with which authors may easily indicate which uses are allowed. <!--opinion While universities, libraries, and funding agencies all have their own reasons to advocate open access, authors are instrumental in making it happen (see [[Peter Suber]]'s ''The Primacy of Authors in Achieving Open Access''<ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/24.html]</ref>). Authors decide whether to submit their work to open access journals, whether to deposit it in open access repositories, and whether to transfer copyright. -->
== Users ==
For the most part, the direct users of research articles are other researchers. Open access helps researchers as readers by opening up access to articles that their libraries do not subscribe to. One of the great beneficiaries of open access may be users in [[developing countries]], where there are currently some [[universities]] with no [[journal]] subscriptions at all {{Fact|date=March 2007}} - although schemes exist for providing subscription-only scientific publications to those affiliated to institutions in developing countries at little or no cost.<ref>[http://www.alpsp.org/htp_dev.htm]</ref>. All researchers benefit from OA as no library can afford to subscribe to every [[scientific journal]] and most can only afford a small fraction of them, this is known as the [[serials crisis]]".<ref>[http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA516819.html Periodicals Price Survey 2005: Choosing Sides - 4/15/2005 - Library Journal<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
Open access extends the reach of research beyond its immediate [[academic]] circle. An OA article can be read by anyone - a [[professional]] in the field, a [[researcher]] in another field, a [[journalist]], a [[politician]] or [[civil servant]], or an interested [[hobbyist]]. Indeed, a 2008 study revealed that mental health professionals are roughly twice as likely to read a relevant article if it is freely available.<ref>[http://decisionsciences.columbia.edu/papers/hardisty-haaga-2008-preprint.pdf Diffusion of Treatment Research: Does Open Access Matter?]</ref>
For anyone interested in exploring the world of [[scholar]]ly research, a good place to start is the [[Directory of Open Access Journals]], although the DOAJ is incomplete, due to the processing time for verifying journal quality and open access policies. Here, you can browse a number of [[peer-review]]ed, fully open access scientific journals, or search for articles in many of the journals. [[Open J-Gate]] <ref>[http://www.openjgate.com World's biggest Open Access English Language Journals Portal - OPEN J-Gate<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> is another index of articles published in English language OA journals, which launched in 2006. Out of 4,300 + journals indexed by Open J-Gate, more than half, over 2,000 are peer-reviewed.
Open access articles can also often be found with a [[web search]], using any general [[search engine]] or those specialized for the scholarly/scientific literature, such as [[OAIster]],<ref>[http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ OAIster | Home<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> citebase,<ref>[http://www.citebase.org/ citebase Search<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> citeseer,<ref>[http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/ Computer and Information Science Papers CiteSeer Publications ResearchIndex<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> scirus,<ref>[http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/ Scirus - for scientific information<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>, ScientificCommons.org,<sub>[http://www.scientificcommons.org/]</sub> and Google Scholar.<ref>[http://scholar.google.com/ Google Scholar<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Results may include [[preprints]] that have not yet been peer reviewed, or [[gray literature]] that will remain unreviewed.
== Research funders and universities ==
Research funding agencies and universities want to ensure that the research they fund and support in various ways has the greatest possible research impact.
Research funders are beginning to expect open access to the research they support. Seventeen of them (including 5 of the 7 UK Research Councils<ref>[http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/outputs/access/default.htm Access to Research Outputs<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> ) have already adopted Green OA [[self-archiving]] mandates, and four more (including two in the US) have proposed to adopt mandates<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ Roarmap<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>.
Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council,<ref>[http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/ SSHRC/CRSH - Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council / Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> which made a commitment to open access in October 2004 has not yet adopted or proposed a mandate but the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) proposed a mandate in 2006 and adopted it in September 2007<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Canadian%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20Research%20%28CIHR%29 OA Self-Archiving Policy: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>, the first North American public research funder to do so.
The new U.S. [[National Institutes of Health]]'s Public Access Policy will take effect in April 2008 and states that "all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication"<ref>[http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ Public Access Homepage<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> It stipulates self-archiving in [[PubMed Central]] rather than in the author's own [[institutional repository]], which some consider a strength and others a weakness.
The [[Wellcome Trust]]'s Position Statement in Support of Open and Unrestricted Access to Published Research from 2006 requires that "outputs from all Wellcome Trust-funded grants must be made freely available via PubMed Central (PMC) - or UK PubMed Central once established - as soon as possible, and in any event no later than six months after publication".<ref>[http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/News-archive/Browse-by-date/2006/News/WTX033857.htm Update: Open access reminder<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> It "will provide grantholders with additional funding, through their institutions, to cover open access charges, where appropriate, in order to meet the Trust's requirements.<ref>[http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Spotlight-issues/Open-access/Policy/index.htm Policy<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
In March, 2006, The [[Howard Hughes Foundation]] announced its agreement with the publisher [[Elsevier]], to pay a negotiated rate for 6-month embargoed access to all articles from scientists supported from that foundation in all Elsevier titles, including [[Cell Press]]. [http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/03/2007030901n.htm].
A growing number of universities are providing [[institutional repositories]] in which their researchers can deposit their published articles. Eleven individual universities and 3 departments have already adapted self-archiving mandates and 2 further multi-university mandates (in Europe and Brazil) have been proposed. [[Eprints]] maintains a Registry of OA Repository Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP).<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php Roarmap<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
In May 2005, 16 major Dutch universities cooperatively launched [http://www.darenet.nl/en/page/language.view/home DAREnet], the Digital Academic Repositories, making over 47,000 research papers available to anyone with internet access. The repository now holds in excess of 69,000 articles [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/11/open_access_research/].
In April 2006, the European Commission "[http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe]" recommended:
*EC Recommendation A1 : "Research funding agencies... should [e]stablish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives..."<br>(This recommendation has since been updated and strengthened by the [http://ec.europa.eu/research/eurab/pdf/eurab_scipub_report_recomm_dec06_en.pdf European Research Advisory Board (EURAB)]) The signatures to a [http://www.ec-petition.eu/ petition] in its support are approaching 20,000 individuals and 1000 institutions.)
In May 2006, the [http://cornyn.senate.gov/doc_archive/05-02-2006_COE06461_xml.pdf US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA)] was proposed toward improving the [http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ NIH Public Access Policy]. Besides points about making open access mandatory, to which the NIH complied in 2008, it argues to extend self-archiving to the full spectrum of major US-funded research. In addition, the FRPAA would no longer stipulate that the self-archiving must be [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/ central]: the deposit can now be in the author's own Institutional Repository (IR).
To somewhat improve on the EC's (and FRPAA's) allowable embargo (of up to 6 months), [http://ec.europa.eu/research/eurab/pdf/eurab_scipub_report_recomm_dec06_en.pdf EURAB] has slightly updated the mandate: all articles must be deposited immediately upon acceptance: the allowable delay applies only to the time when access to the deposit must be made Open Access rather than to the time when it must be deposited. This is intended to permit individual users to use an eprint request "[http://www.eprints.org/news/features/request_button.php email eprint]" button found on some archives to send a semi-automatic email message to the author requesting an individual eprint during the embargo period: This is not yet Open Access, but in the view of at least some advocates it provides for some needs during any embargo, and might help hasten the demise of embargoes altogether, while facilitating the adoption of self-archiving mandates by funders and universities.
== Public and advocacy ==
Open access to scholarly research is important to the public for a number of reasons. One of the arguments for public access to the scholarly literature is that most of it is paid for by taxpayers, who have a right to access the results of what they have funded. This is the reason for the creation of advocacy groups such as The Alliance for Taxpayer Access in the US.<ref>[http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/ ATA | The Alliance for Taxpayer Access<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> For example, people might wish to read the scholarly literature when they or a family member have an illness. Many people also have serious hobbies; e.g. there are so many serious amateur astronomers in the world, that if a comet were on a collision course with the earth, it would probably be one of these amateurs who would find it and raise the alert.
Even those who do not read scholarly articles benefit indirectly from open access. For example, patients benefit when their doctor and other health care professionals have access to the latest research. As argued by open access advocates, open access speeds research progress, productivity, and knowledge translation [http://www.jmir.org/2006/2/e8/]. Every researcher in the world can read an article, not just those whose library can afford to subscribe to the particular journal in which it appears. Faster discoveries benefit everyone. High school and junior college students can gain the information literacy skills critical for the knowledge age. Critics of the various open access initiatives point out that there is little evidence that a significant amount of scientific literature is currently unavailable to those who would benefit from it. While no library has subscriptions to every journal that might be of benefit, virtually all published research can be acquired via interlibrary loan.
Due to the benefits of open access, many governments are considering whether to mandate open access to publicly funded research. However, some organizations representing publishers, such as the [http://www.dcprinciples.org/ DC Principles] group in the United States, feel that such mandates are an unwarranted governmental intrusion in the publishing marketplace. Lobbying on both sides is fierce, both for [http://ec.europa.eu/ pro-OA] and contra-OA.
In developing nations, open access archiving and publishing acquires a unique importance. Scientists, health care professionals, and institutions in developing nations often do not have the capital necessary to access scholarly literature, although schemes exist to give them access for little or no cost. Among the most important is [[HINARI]],<ref>[http://www.who.int/hinari/en/ WHO | Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative, sponsored by the [[World Health Organization]].
Many open access projects involve international collaboration. For example the [[Scientific Electronic Library Online]] (SCIELO),<ref>[http://www.scielo.org/index.php?lang=en SciELO - Scientific Eletronic Library Online<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> is a comprehensive approach to full open access journal publishing, involving a number of Latin American countries. Bioline International, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping publishers in developing countries is a collaboration of people in the UK, Canada, and Brazil; the Bioline International Software is used around the world. [[Research Papers in Economics]] (RePEc), is a collaborative effort of over 100 volunteers in 45 countries. The [[Public Knowledge Project]] in [[Canada]] developed the [[open source]] publishing software [[Open Journal Systems]] (OJS), which is now in use around the world, for example by the [[African Journals Online]]<ref>[http://www.ajol.info/ AJOL - African Journals Online :: African Research, Journals, Medical Research<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> group, and one of the most active development groups is Portuguese.
== Libraries and librarians ==
Many [[librarian]]s have been vocal and active advocates of open access. These librarians believe that open access promises to remove both the ''price barriers'' and the ''permission barriers'' that undermine library efforts to provide access to the journal literature.<ref>[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/acrl.htm Peter Suber, "Introduction to Open Access for Librarians"<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. Many library associations have either signed major open access declarations, or created their own. For example, the [[Canadian Library Association]] endorsed a Resolution on Open Access in June 2005.<ref>[https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2017.html SPARC-OAForum@arl.org Mailing List Archive<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Librarians also educate faculty, administrators, and others about the benefits of open access. For example, the [[Association of College and Research Libraries]] of the [[American Library Association]] has developed a Scholarly Communications Toolkit.<ref>[http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/scholarlycomm/scholarlycommunicationtoolkit/toolkit.htm ALA | Scholarly Communication Toolkit<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> The [[Association of Research Libraries]] has documented the need for increased access to scholarly information, and was a leading founder of the [[Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition]] (SPARC).<ref>[http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.html SPARC<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
At most universities, the library houses the institutional repository, which provides free access to scholarly work of the university's faculty. Some open access advocates believe that institutional repositories will play a very important role in responding to open access mandates from funders<ref>[http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates]</ref>. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries has a program<ref>[http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/institutional_repositories/institutional_repositories-e.html CARL - Online Resource Portal<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> to develop institutional repositories at all Canadian university libraries.
An increasing number of libraries provide hosting services for open access journals. A recent survey by the Association of Research Libraries <ref>[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/more-on-libraries-as-oa-publishers.html]</ref> found that 65% of surveyed libraries either are involved in journal publishing, or are planning to become involved in the very near future.
==Criticism==
{{Main|open access journal|self-archiving}}
{{Expand-section|date=April 2008}}
Opposition to open access has largely been from commercial journal publishers, whose [[business model]] depends upon providing access to research only to those who will pay for journal subscriptions. The [[Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine]] (PRISM), a lobbying organization formed by the [[Association of American Publishers]] (AAP), is at the forefront of this opposition. [http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/08/28/prism_open_access/index.html] PRISM and AAP have lobbied against the increasing trend amongst funding organizations to require open publication, describing it as "government interference" and a threat to [[peer review]]. [http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6471211.html]
There are those who think that open access is unnecessary or even harmful. It can be argued that there is no need for those outside major academic institutions to have access to primary publications, at least in some fields. <ref>[http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/684 DLIST - Open Access: What Comes Next<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
Budgets for many academic institutions and libraries may not include funding for the "article processing charges" required to publish in many open access journals, e.g. those published by BioMed Central [http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq#why]. Unless steps are taken to address this issue, such as offering discounts to authors from countries with low incomes, high article processing charges risk excluding authors from developing countries or less well-funded research fields from publishing in open access journals.
==Early history of the open access movement==
<!--perhaps it should be a separate article-->
The beginnings of the scholarly journal were a way of expanding access to scholarly findings. More recently, many individuals anticipated the open access concept even before the technology made it possible. One early proponent was the physicist [[Leó Szilárd]]. To help stem the flood of low-quality publications, he jokingly suggested in the 1940s that at the beginning of his career each [[scientist]] should be issued with 100 vouchers to pay for his papers. Closer to our own day, but still ahead of its time, was [[Common Knowledge]]. This was an attempt to share information for the good of all, the brainchild of [[Brower Murphy]], formerly of The Library Corporation. Both Brower and Common Knowledge are recognised in the Library Microcomputer Hall of Fame.<ref>[http://www.wiredlibrarian.com/wln/wlnhalloffame.htm WLN: Library Microcomputer Hall of Fame<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
The modern open access movement springs from the potential unleashed by the electronic medium, and by the [[world wide web]]. It is now possible to publish a scholarly article and ''also'' make it instantly accessible anywhere in the world where there are [[computers]] and [[internet]] connections. The fixed cost of producing the article is separable from the minimal marginal cost of the online distribution.
These new possibilities emerged at a time when the traditional, print-based scholarly journals system was in a crisis. The number of journals and articles produced has been increasing at a steady rate; however the average cost per journal has been rising at a rate far above [[inflation]] for decades, and budgets at academic libraries have remained fairly static. The result was decreased access - ironically, just when technology has made almost unlimited access a very real possibility, for the first time. [[Libraries]] and [[librarian]]s have played an important part in the open access movement, initially by alerting faculty and administrators to the serials crisis. The Association of Research Libraries developed the [[Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition]] (SPARC), in 1997, an alliance of academic and research libraries and other organizations, to address the crisis and develop and promote alternatives, such as open access.
The first online-only, free-access journals (eventually to be called "open access journals") began appearing in the late 1980s. Among them was ''Bryn Mawr Classical Review''<ref>[http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/ The Bryn Mawr Classical Review<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>, ''Postmodern Culture''<ref>[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/ Project MUSE - Postmodern Culture<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> and ''Psycoloquy''<ref>[http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ Welcome to PsycPrints<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>.
The first free scientific online archive was arXiv.org, started in 1991, initially a preprint service for physicists, initiated by [[Paul Ginsparg]]. Self-archiving has become the norm in physics, with some sub-areas of physics, such as high-energy physics, having a 100% self-archiving rate. The prior existence of a "preprint culture" in high-energy physics is one major reason why arXiv has been successful.<ref>[http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0102004 [physics/0102004] Predecessors of preprint servers<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> arXiv now includes papers from related disciplines, such as computer science and mathematics, but computer scientists mostly self-archive on their own websites and have been doing so for even longer than physicists. ([[Citeseer]] is a computer science archive that harvests, [[Google]]-style, from distributed computer science websites and [[institutional repository|institutional repositories]] and contains almost twice as many papers as arxiv.) arXiv now includes postprints as well as preprints.<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#What-is-Eprint Self-Archiving FAQ<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> The two major physics publishers ([[American Physical Society]] and [[Institute of Physics]] Publishing have reported that arXiv has had no effect on journal subscriptions in physics; even though the articles are freely available, usually before publication, physicists value their journals and continue to support them. <ref>[http://www.iop.org/ Institute of Physics - Home of the Institute of Physics<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>) <ref>[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/ Open access self-archiving: An Introduction - ECS EPrints Repository<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
The [[inventor]]s of the [[Internet]] and the [[World Wide Web|Web]] -- computer scientists -- had been self-archiving on their own [[File Transfer Protocol|FTP]] sites and then their websites since even earlier than the physicists, as was revealed when [[Citeseer]] began harvesting their papers in the late 1990s. The 1994 "[[Subversive Proposal]]"<ref>[http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/sub01.html Association of Research Libraries :: Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> was to extend [[self-archiving]] to all other disciplines; from it arose [[CogPrints]] (1997) and eventually the [[Open Archives Initiative|OAI]]-compliant generic [[GNU]] [[Eprints.org]] software in 2000.<ref>[http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD D-Lib - In Brief (October 2000)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
In 1997, the U.S. [[National Library of Medicine]] (NLM) made [[Medline]], the most comprehensive index to medical literature on the planet, freely available in the form of [[PubMed]]. Usage of this database increased a hundredfold when it became free, strongly suggesting that prior limits on usage were impacted by lack of access. While indexes are not the main focus of the open access movement, free Medline is important in that it opened up a whole new form of use of [[scientific literature]] - by the public, not just professionals.
In 1998, the ''American Scientist Open Access Forum'' <ref>[http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Archives Of American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum@Listserver.Sigmaxi.Org<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> was launched (and first called the "September98 Forum").
The ''Journal of Medical Internet Research'' (''JMIR'')<ref>[http://www.jmir.org/ JMIR Home<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>,one of the first Open Access journals in medicine, was created in 1998, publishing its first issue in 1999.
In 1999, [[Harold Varmus]] of the [[NIH]] proposed a journal called [http://www.nih.gov/about/director/pubmedcentral/ebiomedarch.htm E-biomed], intended as an open access electronic publishing platform combining a [[preprint]] server with peer-reviewed articles. E-biomed later saw light in a revised form<ref>[http://www.nih.gov/about/director/pubmedcentral/pubmedcentral.htm PubMed Central: An NIH-Operated Site for Electronic Distribution of Life Sciences Research Reports<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> as [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/[[PubMed Central]]], a [[postprint]] archive.
It was also in 1999 that the [[Open Archives Initiative]] and its [[OAI-PMH]] protocol for metadata harvesting was launched in order to make online archives interoperable.
In 2000, [[BioMed Central]], a for-profit open access publisher, was launched by the then Current Science Group (the founder of the ''Current Opinion'' series, and now known as the Science Navigation Group) <ref>[http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/pr-releases#bn00 BioMed Central | about us | Press releases<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. In some ways, BioMed Central resembles [[Harold Varmus]]' original E-biomed proposal more closely than does [[PubMed Central]] <ref>[http://www.infotoday.com/it/jan05/poynder.shtml Interview with Vitek Tracz: Essential for Science<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. BioMed Central now publishes over 170 journals <ref>[http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/journaloverview BioMed Central | for authors | Overview<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>.
In 2001, 34,000 scholars around the world signed "An Open Letter to Scientific Publishers",<ref>[http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html Public Library of Science: Read the Open Letter<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> calling for "the establishment of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form". Scientists signing the letter also pledged not to publish in or peer-review for non-open access journals. This led to the establishment of the [[Public Library of Science]], an advocacy organization. However, most scientists continued to publish and review for non-open access journals. PLoS decided to become an open access publisher aiming to compete at the high quality end of the scientific spectrum with commercial publishers and other open access journals, which were beginning to flourish <ref>[http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0000036 PLoS Biology - Why PLoS Became a Publisher<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. Critics have argued that, equipped with a $10 million grant, PLoS competes with smaller OA journals for the best submissions and runs danger to destroy what it originally wanted to foster <ref>[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7096/full/441914a.html Open-access journal hits rocky times : Article : Nature<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>.
In 2002, the [[Open Society Institute]] launched the [[Budapest Open Access Initiative]]. In 2003, the [[Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities]] was drafted and the [[World Summit on the Information Society]] included open access in its Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action.
The idea of mandating self-archiving was mooted at least as early as 1998.<ref>[http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0010.html American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum: Re: Savings from Convertin<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Since 2003<ref>[http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind03&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&F=l&S=&P=91229 AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM archives - 2003 (#710)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> efforts have been focused on open access mandating by the funders of research: governments,<ref>[http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm Recommendations For Uk Open-Access Provision Policy<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> research funding agencies,<ref>[http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp Access to Research Outputs<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> and universities.<ref>[http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ Roarmap<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> These efforts have been fought by the publishing industry<ref>[http://www.prismcoalition.org/ PRISM<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. However, many countries, funders, universities and other organizations have now either made commitments to open access, or are in the process of reviewing their policies and procedures, with a view to opening up access to results of the research they are responsible for.
For more on the history of open access, see [[Peter Suber]]'s "Timeline of the Open Access Movement",<ref>[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm Peter Suber, Open-Access Timeline (formerly: FOS Timeline)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. One of the many [[librarian]]s who have been leaders in the self-archiving approach to open access is [[Hélène Bosc]]; her work can be found in her "15-year retrospective".<ref>[http://www.tours.inra.fr/prc/internet/documentation/communication_scientifique/comsci.htm Communication scientifique et Internet<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Richard Poynder, a freelance journalist, contributes to a [[blog]] on open access, [http://poynder.blogspot.com/ "Open and Shut?"]. He has written a series of interviews with a few of the leaders of the open access movement.
== Bibliography of empirical studies on open access ==
(See also the [http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html Bibliography of Findings on the Open Access Impact Advantage])
*Björk, B-C., Roos, A., and Lauri, M. [http://oacs.shh.fi/publications/elpub-2008.pdf Global annual volume of peer reviewed scholarly articles and the share available via different Open Access options.] ''The International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB 2008) - Open Scholarship: Authority, Community and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0, June 25-27 2008.''
*Bollen, J., Van de Sompel, H., Smith, J. and Luce, R. (2005) [http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0503007 Toward alternative metrics of journal impact: A comparison of download and citation data] ''Information Processing and Management'', 41(6): 1419-1440
*Brody, T. and Harnad, S. (2004) [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10207/ Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals] ''D-Lib Magazine'' 10(6).
*Brody, T., Harnad, S. and Carr, L. (2005) [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/ Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact] ''Journal of the American Association for Information Science and Technology'' (JASIST).
*Davis, P. M. and Fromerth M. J. (2007 in press) [http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs.DL/0603056/ Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads for mathematics articles?] ''Scientometrics.'' (The results of this study do not confirm the Open Access postulate. The most plausible explanation of a citation advantage was Self-Selection, which has led to higher quality articles being deposited in the arXiv.)
*Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2005) [http://www.dfg.de/dfg_im_profil/zahlen_und_fakten/statistisches_berichtswesen/open_access/download/oa_report_eng.pdf ''Publishing Strategies in Transformation? Results of a study on publishing habits and information acquisition with regard to open access'']
*Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2005), Johannes Fournier [http://www.dfg.de/dfg_im_profil/zahlen_und_fakten/statistisches_berichtswesen/open_access/download/oa_resp.pdf ''Roads to Knowledge: Activities for Promoting Open Access by the DFG. Response to the Study "Publishing Strategies in Transformation? Results of a study on publishing habits and information acquisition with regard to open access"'']
*Eysenbach G. (2006a) [http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157 Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles. PLoS Biol. 2006;4(5) p. e157.] 'Paper showing the Open Access citation advantage over non-Open Access papers, as well as a gold-OA over green-OA citation advantage.
*Eysenbach G. (2006b) [http://www.jmir.org/2006/2/e8/ The Open Access Advantage]. J Med Internet Res 2006;8(2):e8 'Provides follow-up data to study above'
*Garfield, E. (1955) [http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/science_v122(3159)p108y1955.html Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of Ideas.] ''Science'', Vol:122, No:3159, p. 108-111
*Garfield, E. (1973) [http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/V1p406y1962-73.pdf Citation Frequency as a Measure of Research Activity and Performance] in ''Essays of an Information Scientist'', 1: 406-408, 1962-73, ''Current Contents'', 5
*Garfield, E. (1988) [http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v11p354y1988.pdf Can Researchers Bank on Citation Analysis?] ''Current Comments'', No. 44, October 31, 1988
*Garfield, E. (1998) [http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/eval_of_science_CBE(Utah).html The use of journal impact factors and citation analysis in the evaluation of science.] ''41st Annual Meeting of the Council of Biology Editors'', Salt Lake City, UT, May 4, 1998
*Hajjem, C. and Harnad, S. (2006) [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13193/ The Self-Archiving Impact Advantage: Quality Advantage or Quality Bias?] Technical Report, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, November 2006.
*Hajjem, C. and Harnad, S. (2007) [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13329/ Citation Advantage For OA Self-Archiving Is Independent of Journal Impact Factor, Article Age, and Number of Co-Authors]. Technical Report, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, January 2007.
*Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Gingras, Y. (2005) [http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11688/ Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How It Increases Research Citation Impact] ''IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin'' 28(4) pp. 39-47. Analyzed 1,307,038 articles published across 12 years (1992-2003) in 10 disciplines; OA articles have consistently more citations (25%-250% varying with discipline and year).
*Hardisty, D. J. and Haaga, D. A. F. (2008) [http://decisionsciences.columbia.edu/papers/hardisty-haaga-2008-preprint.pdf Diffusion of Treatment Research: Does Open Access Matter?] ''Journal of Clinical Psychology'' 64(7) 821-839.
*Harnad, S. (2005)[http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/29-guid.html OA Impact Advantage = EA + (AA) + (QB) + QA + (CA) + UA] ''Open Access Archivangelism'' September 17, 2005
*Kurtz, M. J. , Eichhorn, G. , Accomazzi, A. , Grant, C. S. , Demleitner, M. , Murray, S. S. (2004) [http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/ kurtz/IPM-abstract.html The Effect of Use and Access on Citations] ''Information Processing and Management'' 41 (6): 1395-1402
*Lawrence, S, (2001) [http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/online-nature01/ Online or Invisible?] ''Nature'' 411 (2001) (6837): ''Paper first showing the Open Access citation advantage over non-Open Access papers in computer science.''
*Moed, H. F. (2005a) [http://www.cwts.nl/1-4020-3713-9/1-4020-3713-9_Executive_Summary.pdf Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation] NY Springer.
*Moed, H. F. (2005b) [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110506743/ABSTRACT Statistical Relationships Between Downloads and Citations at the Level of Individual Documents Within a Single Journal] ''Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology'', 56(10): 1088-1097.
*Shadbolt, N., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2006) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12453/ The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable] In Jacobs, N., (Ed. ''Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects'', chapter 21. Chandos
==References==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
==Further reading==
*[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm Open Access Overview]
*[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html Open Access News]
*[http://www.arl.org/pubscat/pubs/openaccess/ Open Access Bibliography]
*[http://openaccess.eprints.org Open Access Archivangelism]
*[http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html American Scientist Open Access Forum]
*[http://www.digital-scholarship.org/cwb/oaupdate.htm Open Access Update]
*[http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11030.html Esanu,Julie M. & Uhlir, Paul F. (2004) Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science:Proceedings of an International Symposium]
*[[Lawrence Lessig|Lessig, Lawrence]] . Free Culture. New York: Penguin Press, (2004)
*[[John Willinsky|Willinsky, John]]. [http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10611&ttype=2 The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship] (MIT Press, 2006)
* Björk, B-C. (2007) "A model of scientific communication as a global distributed information system" Information Research, 12(2) paper 307. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-2/paper307.html or http://www.sciencemodel.net/]
*[http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/inquiry/myths/?myth=all (Mis)Leading Open Access Myths]
==See also==
*[[Access to Knowledge Movement]]
*[[Creative Commons]]
*[[Science Commons]]
*[[GenBank]]
*[[List of academic journal search engines]]
*[[Open Communication]]
*[[Open content]]
*[[Open textbook]]
*[[Open data]]
*[[Open source]]
*[[Public domain]]
*[[Public Knowledge]]
*[[PubChem]]
==External links==
===OA discussion lists & forums===
*[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html Open Access News], a weblog by Peter Suber
*[http://oalibrarian.blogspot.com OA Librarian]
*[http://openaccess.eprints.org/ Open Access Archivangelism] by Stevan Harnad
*[http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html American Scientist Open Access Forum], continuous since 1998
*[http://israelscholar.org/openaccess/2005/06/discussion-list-on-oa-topics-for-stm.html Discussion List on Open Access topics for STM Journal Editors]
*[http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/ Liblicense-L] moderated by Ann Okerson
*[http://openaccess.wetpaint.com/ Open Access Wiki] discuss OA in scientific communities
*[http://www.openstudents.org/ Open Students], an OA discussion forum for students, sponsored by [[SPARC]]
===Others===
*[http://oad.simmons.edu Open Access Directory] Wiki
*[http://www.escholarlypub.com/cwb/oaw.htm Open Access Webliography]
*[http://roar.eprints.org/ Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)]
*[http://www.openarchives.eu The European Guide to OAI-PMH Digital Repositories in the World]
*[http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ Registry of Open Access Materials Archiving Policies(ROARMAP)]
*[http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/openftlist.html PubMedCentral list of open access journals]
* [http://www.plos.org/ Public Library of Science] list of open access science journals
*[http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/open_access.html Hot Topics: Open Access] From the UC Berkeley Library Collections Scholarly Communications page
*[http://www.google.com/Top/Reference/Open_Access_Resources Google Directory - Open Access Resources]
[[Category:Open access]]
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