Collins Library Links: What is Open Access and Why Should We Care?

What is Open Access and Why Should We Care?

“Last week, the editors for the linguistics journal Lingua had finally had enough. Elsevier, a major academic publishing house, has put out the highly regarded journal for decades.  But on October 27, the journal’s six editors and 31 members of its editorial board quit. Their beef?  The high fees Elsevier charges authors and academic institutions to see the journal..”

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/editors-of-the-journal-lingua-protest-quit-in-battle-for-open-access/

• Open Access refers to a movement of scholars to share the products of their research with anyone (not just those who can afford expensive journal subscriptions) for both personal and global benefit.
• Many universities, institutions, governments, and funders now mandate Open Access, which means that familiarity with Open Access is a valuable skill for academics and researchers of all types.

How can you Support the Open Access Movement:

• Negotiate your publishing rights so that your research can be displayed in Sound Ideas, our institutional repository.
• Support Open Access Journals such as those being developed here at Puget Sound, for example;  the recently launched Race & Pedagogy Journal.
• When asked to serve on an OA editorial board, accept the invitation.
• Ask the journals or scholarly societies where you have some influence to do more to support OA.
• Many university libraries are cancelling subscriptions to high priced journals. We have moved cautiously in this direction, but it may become more imperative in the future. We examine use and continued appropriateness for each periodical that increases it prices at an unusually high level.  We have cancelled some titles, due to that factor.

Learn More:

• The Right to Research organization advocates for access to research information.  Price barriers should not prevent anyone from getting access to research they need.
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition: SPARC supports the immediate, barrier-free online availability of scholarly and scientific research articles, coupled with the rights to reuse these articles fully in the digital environment, and supports practices and policies that enable this.
• The SPARC author rights guide provides you with information about how to negotiate access rights to your scholarly publication.
• Review our LibGuide on Scholarly Communication.
• Talk to your Liaison Librarian.