For instance, you have to know that scholars are not paid for the articles they publish in scientific journals. The aim of those articles is to improve the field scholars are studying and show their new discoveries to the world. However, people sometimes do not read their articles because they are restricted to a particular section of society. How can this be changed in order to help improving the right for information of the society? The answer is Open Access.
Open access or (OA) refers to unrestricted online access to articles published in scholarly journals. Open access breaks barriers and the limits of society. It has to be said that this system could not exist without the appearance of internet. Internet has given the key to society to being able to read a wide range of articles all over the world. Readers can do whatever they want with the articles copy, download, print… However, Open Access is different from open content where users can change the text they are reading.
Many people may think that Open Access is not good for authors. However, this is not true. Everybody will take advantage of Open Access. For instance, there have been many studies that show that articles who are published in open access journals are more cited and read than the rest of the books. Authors will be happy to know that their books are being read and that they are having more impact than if they have been published in a normal journal. Moreover, articles will be more effective because they will be more easy to find and use. Another part of the society that will take advantage of OA will be teachers that will feel safe that their students are using the convenient information to the research they will have to do.
What about quality? There are some misunderstandings about Open Access. Some people claim that this are second-class papers and that they do not have enough quality. However, these articles are peer review, in other words, they are checked in order to know if they are good enough. Moreover, there will be more competition between scholars that will want their articles to be more cited and read than the ohters.
Finally, there are two ways to publish the articles through Internet. On the one hand, authors can publish their articles in Open Access Repositories which are digital collections of all the articles published by different authors. On the other hand, Open Access journals are also popular. They consist in peer-reviewed journals whose articles may be accessed online without carge. Many institutions and universities are launching their own digital repositories to publish their articles to the whole public. There is a video in the references that shows very well the desire to improve OA by all the institutions. There also included in the references some interesting repositories where you can find good articles.
References:
- Open Access (April 2005) In JISC.Retrieved 12:00, January 8,2011, from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISC-BP-OpenAccess-v1-final.pdf
- Open Access (2004) In ARL (Association of Research Libraries). Retrieved 14:00, January 8, 2011, from http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/openaccess.pdf
- Open access (publishing) (December, 2010,29) In Wikipedia. Retrieved 15:00, January 8,2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_(publishing)
- Open access: Just publish (2009, February,24) In Youtube. Retrieved 15:10, January 8, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O67olph9gY
- Directory of Open Access Journals (2011) In DOAJ. Retrieved 16:00, January 8, 2011, from http://www.doaj.org/
- Open J- Gate (2011) In openj-gate. Retrieved 16:30, January 8, 2011 from http://www.openj-gate.com/Search/QuickSearch.aspx
