Open Access is the free and unrestricted access to information for everyone. This can be journal articles, books, images, data and other types of output.
There are several way of making your work open access. This diagram outlines the processes involved for publishing in journals and this guide fill in the details.
CC-BY-NC 4.0 SBU Libraries https://library.stonybrook.edu/scholarly-communication/open-access/
The Gold Open Access publishing model involves the authors paying for article publication (article processing fee or APC) in a journal and articles are then freely available to readers with no additional subscription charges. Providing the appropriate licence has been agreed, the article may then be shared and re-used. Many journals now offer complete or partial open access (hybrid) publishing options. BioMed Central is an example of a major open access publisher in medicine and healthcare. See the Directory of Open Access Journals to identify journals using this model.
RCSI Library is a member of the IReL national consortium, which has negotiated gold open access agreements with a number of publishers; details of these can be found here.
Also known as self-archiving, the Green Open Access model allows you to deposit a version of your article in an institutional repository such as the RCSI Repository, the RCSI's open publications repository. Benefits also include:
preserves your work publicly and indexes on Google Scholar
categorises RCSI research output
Permitted versions can be the final published pdf (if it has been published via the gold route and has a Creative Commons licence), the original submitted manuscript or the accepted manuscript which incorporates changes from the peer review process. The Library team are happy to advise you on publisher permissions – contact us at repository@rcsi.com
The Green Open Access model satisfies open access mandates by funding agencies. However many publishers require an embargo period on accepted manuscripts in repositories – often 6 or 12 months – and this may be contrary to the funder mandate.
There are two other lesser-known open access models – Bronze and Diamond.
The Bronze Open Access model is where an article is freely available on a publisher’s website. Some articles may be made free for a period of time; other articles may be made available after an embargo period. While the articles are available to read on the publisher’s websites without payment, they don’t have a Creative Commons licence and therefore may not be re-used or deposited elsewhere, such as an institutional repository or personal website.
A good example of the Bronze Open Access model is COVID-19 research, where most publishers made papers freely available to all.
The Diamond Open Access model (also known as Platinum) is where an article is made open access without the author paying Article Processing Charges (APCs), as is the case in Gold Open Access, but there is also no payment to read the article. It mostly involves small societies and collaborative community agreements, often led by academia – more details and an Action Plan from Science Europe and partners.
Examples:
F1000Research host open access platforms such as HRB Open Research. See Open Research Platforms for more details.
The Green Open Access route satisfies open access mandates by funding agencies, although embargoes may apply and may be contrary to the funder mandate. This model allows you to deposit a version of your article in an institutional repository such as the RCSI Repository.
Knowing which version of your work you can deposit can be difficult to ascertain. Sherpa Romeo can be useful in helping to determine what your rights are; this online resource aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis. Information from here must be double-checked against the policies of individual journals however as policies change over time.
Terminology can differ from publisher to publisher; the table below should help you to decide which version is necessary for your particular needs.
|
Version Stages |
Definition |
Alternative terms |
|
Submitted Version |
The version originally submitted to the journal before peer review and corrections |
Preprint, Author's original draft |
|
Accepted Version |
The accepted version, after peer review but prior to the final copy-editing and layout |
Postprint, Accepted Manuscript, Author’s Accepted Manuscript |
|
Published Version |
An exact digital replica of the published article |
Postprint, Version of record, Publisher's version |
Image credit: Ryan Regier, CC BY. Book image by Benny Forsberg.
