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Scholarly Communication: Finding Open Access Resources

What is Open Access?

Open access resources are "digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." (Peter Suber's Open Access Overview)

In academic journal publishing, you're likely to come across the following OA models:

  • Gold OA, where the author publishes in an open access journal. Depending on the journal policy, the author may have to pay an article processing charge (APC);
  • Hybrid, where the author pays an APC to publish their article open access in a subscription journal; and
  • Green OA, where the author makes a version of their article open access by self-archiving in a repository. For more information about Green OA, check out the "Pre-prints, Post-prints, and Publisher PDFs" box on the Sharing Your Research tab.

Where Can I Find Open Access Content?

Open access logoYou can find open access content in open access repositories and directories and in the library's collections by using Summon. To limit your Summon search results to open access content, select "Open Access" under the Refine Your Search heading located at the left of the screen.

The following is a list of some of the more widely-used repositories and directories. If you have questions about finding open access resources in your discipline, contact Emily Gattozzi.

Journals

Books

Images, Audio, and Video

Data Sets