RSP - OA

What is Open Access?

'Open Access' (or OA) is the practice of providing free, unlimited online access to scholarly works and research outputs in a digital format, with limited restrictions on re-use.

Often Open Access research outputs will have a Creative Commons licence applied that ensures the output remains Open Access, and that any restrictions on re-use are enforced.

Benefits of Open Access include:

• Practitioners being able to apply findings 
• Research being able to influence policy decisions
• Public access to research findings
• Higher citation rates
• Compliance with research funder, national research assessment and local University Open Access requirements
• Access to research for scholars in the developing world

There are various forms of Open Access, as will be outlined in the next section.

Types of Open Access

There are four main types of open access that you may hear about: Diamond (or Platinum), Gold, Green or Bronze (or Free) Open Access.
 

💎 Diamond (or Platinum) Open Access 

Diamond Open Access is similar to Gold Open Access, where the research is Open at the point of publication, except that there is no charge for publishing.
 

🟡 Gold Open Access (with Creative Commons Licences)

Gold Open Access makes the final version of an article freely and permanently accessible for everyone, immediately at publication. Copyright for the article is retained by the authors and most of the permission barriers are removed. Gold Open Access typically occurs as a result of publishing in an open access or hybrid journal. There is usually a fee (called an article processing charge or APC) associated with this option which the author or their institution will be asked to pay. Articles published Gold OA will usually be published with a Creative Commons Licence. 

🟢 Green Open Access (self-archiving)

When authors publish with a journal and deposit a version of the article for free public use in their institutional repository (e.g. Pure) and/or a central subject-based repository (e.g. Arxiv or PubMed Central​), this is known as self-archiving and is often referred to as Green Open Access.  Depending on the publisher's policies, the version archived is often an author's accepted version rather than the published version. Most Open Access requirements will consider Green Open Access routes.
 

🟤 Bronze (or "Free") Open Access 

Sometimes publishers may release an article under a Free licence, which is sometimes called “Bronze Open Access”. Whilst this research would be freely available like most open access, this may not always be reliable and could revert to a more restrictive licence. As such, this will not meet any Open Access requirements.