What does the term Open Access mean?
The definition of the concept emerged from three conferences:
Does GCSU have an Open Access policy?
Georgia College & State University has taken no formal position on this issue.
Why would an author be interested in pursuing an open access channel for publication?
How can I make my work more openly available?
There are several options for making your research more widely available:
What version of my article do I submit to the Knowledge Box?
The best answer is that you should submit the version permitted by your publication agreement. That agreement may allow deposit of the final, published work. Many agreements allow deposit of the final draft that you submitted to the journal for editorial review.
Is it true that Open Access articles and journals are not peer-reviewed?
How have publishers responded to Open Access policies?
Many academic publishers have become supporters of university repositories. Their publication agreements often allow authors to deposit a draft or sometimes even the final published version of the article. Many include in their standard agreement a provision allowing deposit of some version of the article with a university repository.
Does my funder have an Open Access policy?
Why does my publisher charge a fee for Open Access?
The publisher charges those fees to fund open access publication of your article at the journal’s website, but there are two ways to make scholarship open: through publisher-hosted OA (which sometimes involves fees) and through self-archiving by an author by reserving rights for authors to include the author’s version of their articles in an open access repository like The Knowledge Box. There is no fee associated with this self-archiving function. Authors may choose to pursue paid, publisher-hosted OA for their own reasons, but that is not required or suggested.
Do I have to get permission from my co-authors to deposit my work in The Knowledge Box?
No. Under US copyright law, any joint author can give nonexclusive permission to copy and distribute the work. Best practices would include treating open access participation like other co-authorship issues – determining author order, reporting contributions, etc. – and, hence, discussing the issue among co-authors as part of the writing and publication process.
How will people find my work once it’s available?
Most people find their way to articles in repositories via general internet searches or using tools like Google Scholar. Open access repositories like The Knowledge Box include information about each item in a standardized way that is easily crawled and understood by search engines. This increases the likelihood the articles will not only be found by searches, but will also turn up higher in search results.
Can I make my work Open Access if it has copyrighted images in it?
In some cases yes, and in some cases no. It depends on whether you had to sign an agreement to get access to the image you used. If you didn’t, because the image is in the public domain or your use of it was fair use, then the work can be made publicly accessible with the image included. If you did sign an agreement, review the agreement to see if it allows broad use of the image as long as it is in the context of the article. If the terms of the agreement would not permit public access to the image in the context of the article, you have a few options:
What if my article is already openly available?
If your article is available for free at the publisher’s website, or you’ve added it to a repository like PubMed Central or SSRN, just give us the link, or use the deposit process form on The Knowledge Box. Social networking sites like Academia.edu and ResearchGate are not repositories and do not provide the same sorts of services, such as supporting open metadata and providing long-term preservation. You can read more about the difference between social networking sites and open access repositories here.