Open Access is free access to scientific publications available on the Internet with no financial or technical barriers. Publications in Open Access can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed or searched by anyone. It is also possible to publish links to full texts or use them in any other lawful purpose. Authors of such publications retain the right to the recognition of their authorship and accurate citation.
Open Access Movement is a social initiative that brings together scientists and librarians working to promote free access to digital scientific publications on the Internet, aiming at limiting so-called double financing (scientific research is usually conducted with public funds, afterwards the access to the results of the research is finanaced from the same sources) as well as facilitating the circulation of information in science and expanding the range of publication influence.
Division by copyright
Because of copyright and text use open access can be divided into:
‘Gratis Open Access’ involves making a work freely available in accordance with fair use provisions (eg. a work may be cited, but derivative works cannot be created or distributed). Gratis Open Access is accomplished by posting the full text on a website (eg. scientific journal website, a scholarly repository). Information about repositories can be found in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) and Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).
‘Libre Open Access’ provides free access to content with reuse rights. It functions thanks to the use of Creative Commons licenses (CC licenses), eg. a work may be cited and derivative works may be created and distributed if it is compatible with the CC license used. To implement ‘Libre Open Access’ you have to indicate one of the two free CC licenses : CC-BY or CC-BY-SA (the other CC licenses are not free, they only provide gratis open access).
Division by method of sharing
Because of the method of making the publications available we distinguish two open access routes:
‘Green route’- it allows authors to make their works available in open access institutional or domain repositories. Authors can provide access to both post prints (peer-reviewed texts) or pre-prints (texts before peer-review) and final versions published in the journal (with the publisher’s consent). Repositories use either non-exclusive license or Creative Commons licenses. A non-exclusive license gives author the freedom when they want to give their work to a different entity. The idea behind Creative Commons licenses is to reserve only certain rights and thus allow the author to protect their work in a more flexible way.
‘Gold route’- involves publishing in peer-reviewed journals published in accordance with Open Access requirements. Some journals use a hybrid model in which individual articles whose authors pay a fee are published in open access. The „SHERPA/RoMEO” and „Directory of Open Access Journals” portals allow to verify the copyright policies of the publishers of specific journal titles.
We encourage you to learn more about the advantages of participating in the Open Access movement