Faculty/staff guide to Open Educational Resources (OER): Open access
On this Open access page, explore: What open access means; how "open access" is different from "open license"; and browse open access repositories.
What is open access?
What is open access?
Open access is usually a term associated with peer-reviewed journals, but it can be applied more generally, as well, to books and other materials. The open access symbol is a lock that has been opened.
Open access (OA) refers to online research outputs that are free of all restrictions on access (e.g. access tolls or subscriptions). Open access can be applied to all forms of published research output, including peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed.
How is "open access" different from "open license"?
Materials with an "open license" (e.g. Creative Commons licenses) are considered OER. Materials that are "open access" means they are freely available to view online without having to log in or pay a subscription fee. Open access materials are NOT necessarily openly licensed. Sometimes, open access materials are ALSO openly licensed, but you have to check the license or copyright info. In general, you can always link to open access materials, but you must check each site's terms of use for any further copyright or usage restrictions (e.g. restrictions on downloading or making copies of materials).
Open access repositories
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)Quality-controlled scientific and scholarly open-access journals, covering a wide range of subjects and many languages. The aim of the DOAJ is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals.
- OMICS GroupInternational through its Open Access Initiative is committed to make genuine and reliable contributions to the scientific community. OMICS Group hosts over 300 leading-edge peer reviewed Open Access Journals and organizes over 100 International Conferences annually all over the world.
- SpringerOpenSpringerOpen journal portfolio includes peer-reviewed, fully open access journals across all areas of science. It ranges from very specialized titles to SpringerPlus, an interdisciplinary open access journal that covers all disciplines.
- Science Direct Open Access JournalsAlmost 600 open access titles are available in this leading scientific database. The TCC Library also has a subscription to this database, which provides access to more scientific journal titles that are not openly accessible.
- Elsevier Open Access JournalsAll articles in open access journals which are published by Elsevier have undergone peer review and upon acceptance are immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Elsevier Open Access Journals also available in ScienceDirect.
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books.
- OAPEN"OAPEN promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication. We work with publishers to build a quality-controlled collection of open access books and provide services for publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of hosting, deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation."
- Open Book PublishersFounded in 2008, Open Book Publishers is the biggest independent open access academic publisher in the UK.
- Open Access books on JSTOR"7,000+ Open Access ebooks from 90 publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, De Gruyter, and University of California Press, are now available at no cost to libraries or users."
- National Academies Press"The National Academies Press (NAP) publishes the reports of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and medicine, providing authoritative, independently-researched information on important matters in science and health policy."
- NBCI Bookshelf"Free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare"
- Unglue"A place for individuals and institutions to join together in support of free ebooks." A mix of open access, openly licensed, and public domain e-books, fiction and non-fiction.
Except where otherwise noted, the content in these guides by Tacoma Community College Library is licensed under CC BY SA 4.0.
This openly licensed content allows others to cite, share, or modify this content, with credit to TCC Library. When reusing or adapting this content, include this statement in the new document: This content was originally created by Tacoma Community College Library and shared with a CC BY SA 4.0 license.
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