Open Access is when publications are openly online available without having to pay, for any access to them. Unfortunately it does not mean they are free, since authors, most of the time, pay an Author Processing Charges (APCs) to make those publications openly available, to the world. Restrictions on the use of these publications are determined by the license signed by the author and/or the institution the author is affiliated from.
The history of Open Access started already in the early 1990s, when some Open Access journals started to appear. Unfortunately, some Open Access journals were quickly flagged by the scientific community as fraudulent, as many scientists were exploited to pay money for articles to be published which never realised. The scientific community reverted back to the system where articles published was behind the paywall, where subscriptions was necessary to access the content. During the same period, libraries started to engage with publishers, in order to make their collections of journals accessible to their academics and researchers, which was called the "Big Deal". The problem was that certain libraries could afford a multitude of databases and others not. This created an unfair advantage for some researchers and poorer institutions suffered the consequences of barely having any databases.
From the late 2000s the public, especially in the northern hemisphere started to question the scientific community doing research with public funds, as access to the research output in article format was only accessible to subscribing institutions. Open Access therefore started to resurface as a solution again. Libraries also started to struggle with the ever rising costs of the "Big Deal" and this flamed the introduction of Open Access again. This time several movements was established in order organise the transition to ensure sustainability. Some of those movements included the Plan S movement, Von der Max Planck movement, DOAJ etc.
This time there were also several types of Open Access, like the Green Route Open Access, Gold Open Access, Platinum and Bronse Open Access. These are the most popular types available although many others has been introduced with some success and failures.
The aim and purpose of the new Open Access era was the drastic cut in costs for access, to published academic and scientific works. The Open Access drive was now more organised with specific organisations driving the movement to ensure better pricing and successful transformation from the big deal to an almost complete open access worldwide.
For Open Access to be successful and sustainable it needs to be driven by supply and demand. Like any other industry he publishing industry's economy was also driven by supply and demand. In order to drive costs down the quest for supply and demand is to be managed with care. Many publishers charge an arm and a leg for an article to be published in their open access or hybrid journals because the journal is most probably a high impact factor journal. By forcing academics to rather choose a publication with a high impact factor and lower Author Processing Charges (APC), the open access movement would therefore force journals with high APCs to lower their rates because of the shortage of articles in their publications, which could cause a detrimental impact on their impact factor.
Apart from financial benefits, in a study of over 400k articles it was found that publishing Open Access, articles on average have been downloaded three times more often and cited twice as much as articles behind paywalls. Please find linked the Wiley's white paper on Open Access together with an infographic on Open Access publishing. Other benefits include public access for publicly funded research therefore provide taxpayers, with value for money and provide researchers with compliance of grant rules.
There are several types of Open Access, each with its own benefits and consequences. Here are some of the most important ones:
Green Route Open Access Publishing was developed on institutional level. The rejection rate of manuscripts submitted for publishing is currently around 95%. This does not necessarily mean that the 95% rejected articles were not of excellent scientific quality, nor that the articles were of significant scientific importance and therefore could still be an asset for the intellectual property of the institution. By institutions developing there own Institutional Repositories (IR), like TUTDOR in TUT, this meant that opening the IR to the rest of the world with the institutional manuscripts, it could create an institutional or a departmental Curriculum Vitae, which could still lead to local and international collaboration. Using an IR to publish a manuscript unfortunately does not come with a peer review process, nor does it come with a rated journal, but the research will still be available to other institutions. TUT Researchers are therefore welcome to send their original submitted manuscripts to Lawrence Maake
To explore TUTDOR
Gold Open Access means that these publications changed their business model to only allow the publishing of open access articles. This means that authors pay an Author Processing Charge (APC) to have the publication openly available to the rest of the world. Authors maintain their copyright by signing a Creative Commons (cc) license agreement. Publisher may want authors to sign their copyright away, by completing a publisher copyright agreement, but authors should consider rather signing a Creative Commons license agreement in order to maintain copy- and commercial -rights. Some of these journals does have an impact factor, nor a peer review processes and caution should always be taken when articles are submitted and APC fees submitted. This is significant as predatory publishers may impact on the scientific recognition of authors work.
Hybrid publications is traditionally paywall/subscription publications that allow open access articles to be published. As with Gold Open Access these publications do have a peer review process and most journals has an impact factor and might be accredited journals or not. Publishers might require authors to still sign a publisher open access agreement, but authors may ask for a Creative Commons license agreement to maintain copy- and commercial rights. Authors might have to pay a bit more for the creative commons license, but then copyright will still belong to the author and their affiliated institutions.
Diamond or Platinum route publishing refers to journals that publish open access, that do not charge either the authors or the readers. These journals are generally funded either by academic and government institutions, or by scientific societies. These journals are few and far apart and rejection rates are even higher in these journals. Authors also sign a creative commons license agreement to maintain copy- and commercial rights. These journals do have a peer review process and accreditation needs to be checked.
As publishers are under pressure to change, making research output accessible to the world, some publishers provide libraries and institutions with deals to make it more affordable to researchers to publish in Open Access publications. These are called Transformative Agreements. The TUT LIS (Library and Information Services) is a member of SANLIC (South African National Library and Information Consortium). SANLIC received the mandate to negotiate better big deal prices and transformation open access agreements on behalf of all academic and research libraries in South Africa. In the tab under Transformation Agreements is a list of all the transformation open access agreements negotiated by SANLIC, which TUT committed to.