Open Access Resources

Why publish in open access publications?

There are a variety of reasons why an author may want to publish in an open access publication, including: 

  • Many of these journals now have strong reputations, like the Public Library of Science (PLoS) suite of journals with high editorial standards and high Impact Factors.
  • Most open access journals are well indexed and discoverable through search engines and databases 
  • The author's journal of choice for publication may be an open access journal.

Types of Open Access

From opensource.com:

Open access has two different versions—gratis and libre:

  • Gratis open access is simply making research available for others to read without having to pay for it. However, it does not grant the user the right to make copies, distribute, or modify the work in any way beyond fair use.
  • Libre open access is gratis, meaning the research is available free of charge, but it goes further by granting users additional rights, usually via a Creative Commons license, so that people are free to reuse and remix the research.

Open Access Venues

From opensource.com:

There are distinctions regarding the venue in which open access works are published and archived—green and gold:

  • Green open access involves authors self-archiving their articles by sharing them on their own website, or more preferably, in their institution's Institutional Repository or in some other public archive.
  • Gold open access articles are published in a journal that is open access, which means the journal will handle hosting and distributing the journal article in a free and open manner. Gold open access can come with a cost—some gold open access journals have publication fees that need to paid by the author (or the author's employer) to cover the cost of publishing the article.

Article Processing Charge (APC)

Article Processing Charges (APC) is one way in which journals cover the cost of publication of open access articles. An APC is a fee paid by the authors to the journal where they want to publish.  The APC model is used by two types of journals

  • truly open access journals that fund their operation through APCs
  • hybrid journals, which are often published by the large commercial publishers. They are called ‘hybrid’ because these journals still charge subscriptions to subscribers and libraries but have instituted an APC so that authors may choose to make their article open access.

In a truly open access journal that uses APCs the author is required to pay the APC for publication. In a hybrid journal the author is not required to pay the APC for publication, but may choose to do so for a variety of reasons.

Paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) to make your article open access in a traditional subscription based journal may feel like the publisher is double dipping (the publisher gets revenue from subscribers and from subscribing libraries and charges an APC) and sometimes it is just that. But there may be reasons to pay the fee to make your article open access. These include:

  • Anticipating a significant readership beyond well resourced universities in North America, western Europe, Japan and Australasia perhaps in the non-academic reading public or in academic communities in the global south. Open access can provide affordable and convenient access for such reading audiences.

  • Anticipating significant media interest. Journalists can be put off by finding an article behind a paywall and reluctant to link to such articles. 

Read and Publish Agreements

‘Read and Publish’ or ‘Transformative’ agreements are included in some licenses that Williams Libraries signs with journal publishers. In these cases the payment the Libraries makes to the publisher not only allows members of the Williams community to read the content of the journals, but also covers the APCs should members of the Williams community choose to publish in those journals. If APCs are covered by such an agreement, the publisher should make this clear up acceptance of a manuscript. If you wish to check whether a specific journal is covered by such an agreement, contact your liaison librarian through Ask-a-Librarian.