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Open Access

This guide highlights open access initiatives at the University of Northern Colorado as well as provides background information on the open access movement and resources.

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open access is the free, online availability of research and scholarship which can be read and used by anyone without financial, legal, or technical barriers

free access ♦ no barriers ♦ wider audiences ♦ greater impact ♦ author control

Publication Models of Open Access

 

Open Access is not only a movement to make journals more open and accessible (see Beyond Journals). When you hear about open access models, people are generally referring to journal or book publications and it can get confusing. If you have questions, please email library.scholcomm@unco.edu.

Closed Access indicates restricted access and journal articles placed behind a firewall that can only be accessed through payment. This is the traditional access that was in place for centuries, wherein societies and commercial publishers sold access to society members and academic libraries. This model is also called the "reader pays" model, wherein individuals are only able to access the content of the journal if 1) they purchase a subscription directly from the publisher, 2) have reading or borrowing privileges at an academic library, or 3) pay the publisher per individual article (often $30-$50 or more in the 2010s).
 
Sometimes Gold Open Access is called the "author pays" model. In this open access model the publisher makes articles fully accessible on the journal website under a Creative Commons or similar license. An article processing charge (APC) is usually paid by the author (or other funder, such as from grant funding).
 
Hybrid Open Access can also by an "author pays" model. Hybrid is a model wherein a publisher of a subscription journal allows authors to pay to make individual articles open access, but not all articles in the journal are open access. The difference from Gold Open Access journals is that  a library (or other subscriber) is still paying for a subscription to the journal, so the publisher is effectively paid twice for the article, once via subscription, and once via the article process charge (APC) to make the article.
 
The Green Open Access model refers to journals and publishers who allow authors to self-archive a version of the article in an institutional repository or elsewhere and offer the content open access. Generally, the version that a journal or publisher allows to the be posted openly is a pre-print or post-print, but sometimes the publisher's final version.
  • A pre-print is the author's copy of the article before it’s been reviewed by the publisher, pre-reviewed, or copy-edited. 
  • A post-print is the author's copy of the article after it has been peer-reviewed and corrected, but before the publisher has formatted it for publication.
  • The publisher’s version is the version that is formatted and appears in print or online on the journal's website.

When and if an author has signed and submitted a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA), the journal or publisher's policy determines which version of an article can be archived in a repository. Most publishers allow some Green Open Access. Authors can check the CTA for this information. 

 
Bronze Open Access refers to the model of open access wherein a journal makes articles open access (freely available online) but there is no formal Creative Commons or other open license attached to the articles. This indicates that, while the articles are online and can be freely accessed, they are not licensed for reuse (to share or distributed, adapt, or build upon the work without further permissions from the copyright holder). This model is sometimes called Free Access instead of Open Access.
 
Diamond Open Access (also known as Platinum Open Access) journals charge neither the reader nor the author. Instead, payment comes from institutions, advertising, or philanthropy). 
 
Gray Open Access may refer to one of two phenomena. 1) Authors posting a copy of their articles on their own or another website without necessarily having permission from the copyright holder if it is someone other than themselves (the University Libraries encourages all UNC community scholars to post copies of their articles to UNCOpen (UNC's institutional repository) when, and if, the license or copyright holder allows it), or 2) gray literature that is posted as open access on the internet. 
 
Black Open Access is the illegal sharing/posting of scientific articles without regard to copyright and/or publisher fees. Sci-Hub and LibGen are examples of Black Open Access websites that are often mired in litigation. 
 
Authors conduct research and communicate with other scholars through writing journal articles. Publishers of journal articles arrange for peer review of the articles and provide production, hosting and archiving, dissemination, and general publishing operations. Publishers charge either a subscription cost (to a reader) or an article processing fee (to the author) to pay for such services. However, many publishers using the author pays model charge thousands and thousands of dollars - well beyond what is believed to be necessary for the services provided. Sustainable Open Access refers to an author-pays model (such as Gold Open Access) wherein fees are charged to cover the cost of publisher services and enough for the publisher  to make a moderate income (believed to be more in the hundreds of dollars range).
 
The Open Access Movement is symbolized by an orange unlocked padlock. At the core of the Open Access Movement are the principles of free availability, breaking down barriers to information, accelerated research, and expanding the audience of scholarship.