What is Open Access?

Open access is an expression used for the initiative promoting free access to publications via the Internet in the sciences and humanities.
Universities, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, and other well-established organizations etc. supporting the open access movement, encourage their researchers/grant recipients to publish their work in open archives to grant not only a free, worldwide, right of access to, but also a license to copy, print, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly with respect to the existing legal copyright framework.

How did Open Access movement develop?

Open access developed in the last few years through various declarations and initiatives, cfr. Timeline of the Open Access Movement, by Peter Suber . Although they differ from one another in some ways, they all agree that the scientific literature (peer-reviewed articles or preprints) should be freely accessible through the Internet, requiring only that proper attribution of the work be given to the author and that the authors retain control over the integrity of their work.
Some major research funding bodies, such as the US National Institute of Health, UKResearch Councils, Wellcome Trust, CERN, CNRS, DFG, Max Planck Society etc., support the open access policy by offering to pay the publication fees or encouraging the publication of research outputs into institutional repositories. Sometimes they even require open access in order to grant their funding.

What is an Open Archive?

Open Archives are information platforms for full text electronic archiving built following the international technological standard OAI-PMH, with the aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content on the Internet, by promoting interoperability among different archives.

How can I publish open access?

There are two ways to publish open access: OA journal publishing, such as those listed in DOAJ-Directory of Open Access Journals) or OA self-archiving into institutional or disciplinary repositories, such as DocTA, the Institutional Archive of doctoral theses of the Università Cattolica.

Some links and resources on Open Access:

• Open Access Overview (by Peter Suber)
• Budapest Open Access Initiative FAQ
• Wiki on Open Access in Italy
• IFLA Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions)
• Open access: Opportunities and Challenges - A Handbook (published by the European Commission and the German Commission for UNESCO)

Some links and resources on Open Archives:

• OAI - Open Archives Initiative
• OAI - Open Archives Initiative FAQ
• ROAR - Registry of Open Access Repositories
• OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
• GOAP - Global Open Access Portal (UNESCO)