Open Access Resources Guide

Background

Open Access in publication and data sharing is an issue that has been discussed for many years in the scientific community. 

Open access to data has a long history in science, with shared databases available for everything from physics to genomic data.

Open access to published literature has gained more popularity in communities outside of science as more people search for journal literature using search engines such as Google, and expect to be able to access full text articles free of charge.

Definition and History of Open Access

"Open Access" (with capital letters) generally refers to manuscripts or access to written materials, but the concept of open access to information, including data, is more universal.

There are many definitions for Open Access publication, and some are very wordy:

Definition of Open Access Publication (from the Bethesda Statement on Open Access)

An Open Access Publication[1] is one that meets the following two conditions:

1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
   Footnotes:
   [1] Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers.
   [2] Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.

This statement, in turn, was influenced by the earliest activity on Open Access, the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

History of Open Access
For a full timeline of Open Access events up to the end of 2007, see Peter Suber's history of Open Access timeline.  This timeline lists events in OA up to 2009.  For an updated timeline of OA events, see the Open Access Directory (OAD) Wiki.

Here are some highlights of Open Access events in science & scientific publication:

• 1966 - MEDLINE debuts (becomes free in 1997)
• 1974 - first electronic preprint catalog of physics literature established
• 1991 - arXiv (archive of physics and mathematical science literature/preprints) launched
• 1992 - GenBank and Entrez system launched by the NCBI
• 1994 - Digital Libraries Initiative launched by the National Science Foundation (and others)
• 1997 - NCBI launches PubMed and MEDLINE indexed content now becomes available for free in PubMed
• 1998 - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition(SPARC) launched by Association of Research Libraries
• 2000 - February: PubMedCentral (free full-text articles) launched to supplement PubMed(free citations and abstracts); July: BioMedCentral published its first free online article 
• 2002 - May: Creative Commons launched (site for copyright agreements, open access publishing and information for authors); August: Project SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access) launched
• 2003 - Budapest, Bethesda and Berlin statements on Open Access created; October: PLoS Biology becomes the first Public Library of Science title published
• 2004 - Google Scholar created
• 2007 - October: Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) established; December: Congress passes and the president signs a bill mandating that publications arising from NIH-funded research must be deposited into PubMedCentral
• 2008 - April: The NIH Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research takes effect; September: H.R. 6845, The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, is introduced in attempt to ban acts such as the Public Access Mandate (this bill is now dead, but was resurrected as H.R. 801 under the same name in February 2009)
• 2009 - April: Open Access Tracking Network begun by Peter Suber on Connotea; June: the Federal Research Public Access Act is introduced; September: Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity established to encourage university support for authors publishing in OA journals
• 2011 - November: the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy releases a Request for Information (RFI) on Public Access to Scholarly Publication
• 2011 - December: Congress releases the Research Works Act, which attempts to withdraw open access to NIH-funded reseach publications
  • The American Association of Publishers releases a statement of support for the act, but numerous publishers, including Elsevier, withdraw their support in response to massive public & academic backlash against the act
• 2012 - July the European Union Commission backs open access science publishing

Resources on Open Access

Open Access General Information Sites
These are the best sites to read about Open Access.

• OAD (Open Access Directory) wiki site - contains a complete history of OA, lists of OA journals, institutions with OA policies, educational materials and lots more
• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) of the Association of Research Libraries
• PLoS (Public Library of Science) Open Access information page
• SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access)
• Open-Access.net - a German OA site with good resources and information
• OASIS - Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook - Click the "Researchers" link in the left menu bar

Author Copyright Addenda
These are links to pages that have addenda that authors can add to publishers' contracts, ensuring author rights to archive their manuscripts in open access databases.

• Science Commons' Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine
• SPARC's Author Addendum
• The CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation, of which Northwestern is a member) Author Addendum page (the actual addendum is a pdf file--access it by clicking a link called "Authors Copyright Contract Addenda" near the top of the page)
• Other author addenda at the Open Access Directory wiki

Open Access Newsletters and Blogs

• Open Access News - Peter Suber's OA newsletter
• Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) - access the most recent OA additions at Connotea; or choose one of the many RSS options at the OATP links page
• Open Access Now - BioMed Central's OA newsletter

Directories

• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
• OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)

OA Guides

• PLoS, SPARC & OASPI Guide: "How Open Is It?"
• Northwestern's Center on Scholarly Communications and Digital Curation (CSCDC) maintains an OA Guide as part of their Scholarly Communications guides

Pioneers and Champions of Open Access

A number of names have risen to the top of the Open Access movement. 

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

• Harold Varmus - co-founder, PLoS, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
• Patrick O. Brown - co-founder, PLoS, Stanford University School of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Jonathan Eisen - co-founder, PLoS, University of California, Berkeley
• Philip Bourne - editor of PLoS Computational Biology and an outspoken advocate for open access in science literature and data, University of California San Diego

SPARC

• Peter Suber - Senior Researcher at SPARC and one of the most active OA news providers, Earlham College

Interesting Open Access Facts

1. The number of open access journals is dramatically increasing – over one thousand new titles have been added each year for the past 3 years.
   
   
   (Data from the Directory of Open Access Journals )
2. One more medical journal becomes fully open access in PubMed Central every other business day.
3. PLoS Biology and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (all Open Access journals) have the highest impact factors in their topic categories of all journals listed in Journal Citation Reports.
4. One new journal chooses to submit all or most of its content to PubMed Central every business day.
5. Open Access journals rank in the top ten by impact factor in the fields of (Ranked by Journal Citation Reports):
   • rheumatology
   • mathematical and computational biology
   • biology
   • critical care
   • general and internal medicine
   • microbiology
   • biochemistry
   • genetics 
   • parasitology
   • virology
   • primary health care
   • medical ethics
6. PLoS ONE (an open access journal) is one of the largest scholarly journals in the world.
7. Between 4,000 - 5,000 articles per month are deposited into PubMed Central, NIH’s Open Access repository.

Author Fee Discounts for Northwestern Authors

Northwestern authors are eligible for discounts on article processing fees on some Open Access journals, thanks to subscription memberships paid by Northwestern University libraries. 

BioMed Central (BMC) Journals

Northwestern University is a Supporter Member of the Open Access publisher BioMed Central.  For our membership, Northwestern authors are eligible for a discount on article processing fees for BMC journal titles such as:

and many more.  See the BMC article processing fees information page for details.

Public Library of Science (PLoS) Journals

Northwestern University is an Institutional Member supporter of the publisher PLoS.  For our membership, Northwestern authors are eligible for a discount of 10% on article processing fees for PLoS journal titles:

• PLoS Biology
• PLoS Medicine
• PLoS Clinical Trials
• PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
• PLoS Computational Biology
• PLoS ONE
• PLoS Genetics
• PLoS Pathogens

See the PLoS publication fees page for information.

Authors should request these discounts when arranging their publication fee payments with each publisher.