Open Access Publishing

Open Access (OA) publishing is the practice of making research and scholarly literature freely available on the web letting "any users read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts."*Budapest Open Access Initiative

This is in contrast to traditional publishing which allows only those with access to a paid subscription to read the publication.

Benefits of Open Access publishing

• Meets funder's requirements to make publicly funded research available to the public.
• Allows research results to be shared more easily and quickly, and by a wider audience.
• Increases visibility of researcher's work and may increase citation rate.
• Allows researchers to showcase their research output for collaboration and partnership.

​Image from https://creativecommons.org/2013/09/25/public-access-to-publicly-funded-materials-what-could-be/ by Timothy Vollmer and Teresa Sempere García