OA Rationale
OA publishing allows work to be widely discovered, freely read, and frequently cited. OA is fully compatible with peer review; though some OA journals are not peer reviewed.
OA may reduce library costs by eliminating excessive subscription fees to boost publisher profit margins, but OA is not free (costs to run peer review, editing, distribution must be covered).
Following are a few articles that advocate for Open Access. See the Further Reading section for others.
- Should All Research Papers Be Free? (NY Times)One woman’s guerrilla campaign seeks to tear down the paywalls of scholarly journals and make research papers free.
- Open and Shut?Independent journalist Richard Poynder's blog covering OA with essays, interviews, and commentary on the movement.
- Why You Should Ditch Academia.edu and Use CUNY Academic WorksCUNY's OA repository, Academic Works, is the ideal way for you to make articles, book chapters, data, etc. available to your research community and the broader public.
- Open Access - Explained by PLoSOA: What it is; why it matters, and how it works.
- Hiding Your Research Behind a Paywall is ImmoralAcademics work to benefit the public good, but publishers reap a benefit before readers do.
- Further ReadingA round-up of articles, books and blog entries on OA, organized according to the tabs in this guide.
Which Side Are You On?
OA Repositories & Publishers in the News
What Do the Authors of Sci-Hub’s Most-Downloaded Articles Think About Sci-Hub? Chronicle.com (5/13/16).
Elsevier Denies it Will Force SSRN Users on to Other Services. The Times Higher Education (5/19/2016).
Who's Downloading Pirated Papers? Everyone! Science (4/28/2016).
Academics Want You to Read Their Work for Free. The Atlantic (1/26/2016).