WVU Libraries: Open Access (OA)

Background Information

Currently, there are two main facets to the open access movement:

Open Access self-archiving-authors publish in a subscription journal, but also make their articles freely accessible online, either by placing them in an institutional repository or in a central repository such as PubMed Central.
Open Access publishing-authors publish in open access journals that make their articles freely accessible online immediately upon publication. Open access journals conduct peer review and allow authors to retain their copyright. These journals meet their expenses by charging the author a publication fee. Examples of OA publishers are BioMed Central and Public Library of Science (PLoS). There are currently more than 3,200 OA publications listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Some traditional, subscription-based publishers have introduced a "hybrid open access" concept. In this model, the publisher will make an article immediately available to the public if the author pays an additional open-access fee. Frequently referred to as an "open choice" or "paid access" charge, these fees can range from $500-$3,100 per article. Publishers participating in this model include Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley.

The open access movement has been making headlines lately. A few examples include:

On January 21, 2008, the University of California at Berkeley announced that it would offer its researchers access to funding that would cover publication charges for open access journals. This Berkeley Research Impact Initiative also covers a portion of fees charged by non-OA publishers that are willing to provide immediate free access to articles.
On February 12, 2008, Harvard University's arts and sciences faculty adopted a policy that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles free online. This has made Harvard the first university in the United States to mandate open access to its faculty members' research publications. The new policy will allow faculty members to request a waiver, but otherwise they must provide an electronic form of each article to the provost's office, which will place it in an online, institutional repository. Authors among Harvard's arts & sciences faculty will only be able to publish in journals that permit online posting after publication.
As of April 7, 2008, the National Institutes of Health will require all investigators who receive NIH funding for their research grants to submit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central no later than 12 months after acceptance for journal publication. Failure to comply will mean a loss of funding. There are currently some 300 journals that submit articles directly to PubMed Central on behalf of their authors, which means that the authors are not required to do anything extra to meet the NIH Public Access policy. These titles may see increased interest for a while because they will save investigators valuable time. If this happens, it is anticipated that traditional journals will have to start providing the same service in order to have quality, NIH-funded research published in them.