What "Open" Is and Isn't

Open Access Is

Open access makes publications available without subscription or other reader-facing costs. It allows for worldwide, openly available distribution of scholarship thanks to the technological innovation of the internet.

Approaches to Open Access

There are three approaches to making your work available open access:

1.  Deposit your work in an open access repository

Open access repositories accept many types of works, and for published works, the publisher may restrict deposit to a particular version of the work. For example, an author may deposit a preprint (prior to peer review) of an article, an accepted manuscript (aka post-print, after peer review) of an article, or the publisher's final published version (aka version of record). 

Types of repositories:

• Subject repositories provide access to publications related to a specific subject/discipline. PubMed Central is an example of a subject repository.
• Institutional repositories provide access to the intellectual output of an institution. Emory’s institutional repository for scholarly works by all Emory researchers (faculty, staff, and students) is OpenEmory, and for theses and dissertations, it's Emory Theses and Dissertations.
• Data repositories provide access to research datasets. Emory's data repository is Dataverse. 

2.  Open access journals

Open access journals are can be read online for free, and the articles may also have Creative Commons licenses, which allow for sharing and reuse. Most are rigorous and peer-reviewed. They often do not require the transfer of authors’ copyright to the journal. Emory hosts several open access journals, including Southern Spaces, Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, Post45, and Molecular Vision.

3.  Open access books

More university press publishers are offering open access versions of books with the option to buy a print copy.  One example is Luminos, an imprint of the University of California Press.  For Emory College of Arts and Sciences faculty interested in exploring digital publishing and open access distribution, the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry has a digital publishing initiative which provides support and funding. For more information, contact Mae Velloso-Lyons at m.velloso-lyons@emory.edu.

Open Access Isn't

• Open access does not conflict with peer review. In fact, the vast majority of open access journals are peer-reviewed. 
• Open access need not apply to all works of scholarship. Many open access policies apply to journal articles or similar short works, but not to monographs.
• Open access need not be not mandatory in all instances. Many university open access policies include a clause to opt out of depositing an article.
• Open access often does not ask an author to transfer copyright. Keeping your copyright gives you flexibility for future use of your scholarship. 
• Open access isn’t free to produce. The costs of producing and distributing scholarship remain, but they shift. In some cases, authors may pay to have an article published open access. In other cases, authors can deposit articles in an institutional or subject open access repositories at no cost to them.