Open Access and Open Education Resources

Open access means that something is freely available online. For something to be considered open access (OA), it must be digital and publicly available online. Additionally, OA materials must be free of copyright and licensing restrictions. OA has no price or permission barriers to limit anyone's access to them.  (Suber, 2007, p. 171). For a more complete description, please read the chapter, Creating an Intellectual Commons Through Open Access by Peter Suber.

The video below explains the rationale for making information free to serve the needs of a broader society. (e.g.) When we share information and knowledge, we collectively benefit from doing so. "Open access of information provides a universal public good: the more quality information, the greater the public good" (Hess & Ostrom, 2007, p.13)

Important components of the OA model include:

1. Authors keep their copyrights.
2. Zero embargo period.
3. Share the research data with the article.
4. Add a Creative Commons license to the research article that enables text and data mining (any of the licenses work, but CC BY is preferred).

“5.1 Open Access to Scholarship” by Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0.

Why does OA matter to me and my students?

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, explains that scholarly research is essential to improving outcomes for everyone worldwide. When we share scientific breakthroughs, we innovate in ways that benefit all of us, regardless of geography, culture, or socioeconomic status. 

Digital technology permits us to communicate research with an ease we didn't imagine back when monks transcribed individual texts by hand. Unfortunately, our scholarly publishing model hasn't kept pace with these changes.

1. Governments provide most of the funding for research—hundreds of billions of dollars annually—and public institutions employ a large portion of all researchers.
2. Researchers publish their findings without the expectation of compensation. Unlike other authors, they hand their work over to publishers without payment to advance human knowledge.
3. Through peer review, researchers review each other’s work for free.
4. Once published, those who contributed to the research (from taxpayers to the institutions that supported it) must pay again to access the findings. Though research is produced as a public good, it isn’t available to the public who paid for it.

In short, our traditional publishing model requires a) taxpayers to subsidize research, b) pay for colleges to have access to the databases that house the work their scholars produced, and c) one they are no longer affiliated with an institutional library that can afford these exorbitant subscription costs, taxpayers pay once more - directly to the publisher - to gain access to the research. Students and faculty are disadvantaged in this outdated and unethical model for distributing information that is a public good. Since the cost of research databases increases each year, college and university libraries struggle to ensure access for students and faculty, and that lack of access hurts us all. 

How can I publish my work OA?

There are three models of OA publishing: Green OA, Gold OA, and Diamond OA:

Green OA = ​making a version of the manuscript freely available in a repository, also known as self-archiving. An example of green OA is a university research repository. (e.g. Arizona State University Digital Repository).

Source: based on Oberländer, A. (2020). Open Access – Es ist nicht alles Gold, was glänzt. In: Open Science: Von Daten zu Publikationen Zenodo. https://zenodo.org/records/4018594

Gold OA = making the final version of the manuscript freely available immediately upon publication by the publisher, typically by publishing in an Open Access journal and making the article available under an open license. Typically, Open Access journals charge an Article Processing Charge (APC) when an author wishes to (a) publish an article online, allowing for free public access, and (b) retain the copyright to the article. APCs range from $0 to several thousand dollars per article. Read more about APCs at Wikipedia. An example of a gold OA journal is PLOS.

Source: based on Oberländer, A. (2020). Open Access – Es ist nicht alles Gold, was glänzt. In: Open Science. Von Daten zu Publikationen. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4018594  (CC BY 4.0 International)

Diamond OA = a scholarly publication model in which journals do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Diamond OA journals are community-driven, academic-led, and -owned publishing initiatives. Diamond OA journals are designed to be equitable by nature and design and seek to support bibliodiversity through multilingual and multicultural scholarly communities. Diamond OA journals can be found by searching the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals). DOAJ includes journals that charge fees, but has a filter for journals that don’t charge APCs. It currently lists over 13,000 open-access journals without fees. 

“5.1 Open Access to Scholarship” by Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0.

So, what's the relationship between OA and OER?

OA and OER share the philosophical approach that access to research and education should be open to all and free of copyright restrictions or economic barriers. However, the purpose behind content creation for OA is different from OER. 

Content published in OA journals is predominantly scholarly research articles on highly specific topics within a discipline. The scholars who publish their research in OA journals wish for the widest possible readership for their work. It helps if the journals are prestigious as they give more credence to the scholar's work and the institutions funding their research. Articles are peer-reviewed before publication as that is the traditional model for quality control in this model. While OA articles may be widely used and shared, they cannot be remixed or adapted for reuse.

Meanwhile, educators creating OER are building content designed for teaching and learning. This can include various publication types including textbooks, stories, images, videos, learning objects, quizzes, or even entire courses. These materials are published under Creative Commons licenses and are intended for adaptation or reuse by others in education. While there is no formal peer-review process, high-quality content is found in OER, but those adapting materials are encouraged to implement their own quality control prior to use. Unlike OA, many OER come with permissions to adapt as needed, so the end-user has much more flexibility concerning adapting content for use in their specific context.

Open Access and Open Education Resources © 2024 by Paula Crossman. Buxton Library is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0