CHAPTER 1
Introduction, or why open access?
what is open access?
In the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, the words 'open access' have been uttered with increasing frequency in universities around the world.[1] Beginning as little more than a quiet murmur in niche scientific sub-disciplines but developing towards a globally mandated revolution in scholarly communication, the ascent of open access looks set to continue. Despite this rapid, worldwide rise, however, many misunderstandings about the phenomenon remain. At the most basic level, this includes the key question: what exactly is 'open access'?[2] Regardless of the nuances and complexities that will be discussed in this book, 'open access' can be clearly and succinctly defined. The term ‘open access’ refers to the removal of price and permission barriers to scholarly research.[3] Open access means peer-reviewed academic research work that is free to read online and that anybody may redistribute and reuse, with some restrictions.
For a piece of academic research to be called 'open access', it must be available digitally for anybody to read at no financial cost beyond those intrinsic to using the internet; the removal of price barriers. This is similar to the majority of content on the world wide web but it is not the basis on which scholarly publication has historically relied. After all, most websites do not charge readers to access their content while, by contrast, most academic publications are currently bought by libraries as either one-off purchases or ongoing subscriptions. Open access means implementing a new system that allows free access to peer-reviewed scholarly research on the world wide web. The term also means, perhaps more contentiously, that people
1
- ↑ Although the concept of ‘open access’ has existed since the 1980s: Open Access Directory, ‘Early OA Journals’ http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Early_OA_journals [accessed 21 April 2014]. Note also that, in this volume, I refer to the lowering of price and permission barriers with the lower case 'open access' (abbreviated as 'OA') and to the movement dedicated to making this a reality with the title case 'Open Access movement'.
- ↑ Malina Thiede, 'On Open Access Evangelism', Serials Librarian, 67 (2014), 21–6 (p. 23) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2014.915608; Kathleen Fitzpatrick, 'On Open Access Publishing', Society for Critical Exchange, 2010 http://societyforcriticalexchange.org/blog/blog3.php/2010/01/15/on-open-access-publishing [accessed 3 May 2014].
- ↑ Peter Suber, Open Access, Essential Knowledge Series (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), p. 8 http:// bit.ly/oa-book. The term 'barrier', of course, comes laden with a specific value judgement and perspective. The barrier is facing the reader and/or reuser in each of these cases. Other perspectives might contest this term and instead see a 'barrier' to their business model within open access itself, as I will cover shortly.
