​What is Open Access?
As defined by Budapest Open Access Initiative, "by 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
Created by Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), here is a three minute video on Open Access 101.
Open Access Spectrum Tool
This guide provides a means to identify the core components of OA and how they are implemented across the spectrum between “Open Access” and “Closed Access”. Journals have built policies that vary widely across the six fundamental aspects of OA – reader rights, reuse rights, copyrights, author posting rights, automatic posting, and machine readability. This, in turn, has caused confusion among authors seeking to make informed publishing decisions, funders seeking to formulate and enforce their access policies, and other stakeholders within the research ecosystem. The HowOpenIsIt? Open Access Guide consolidates the key elements of journal policies into a single, easy-to-follow resource that interested parties can use to move the conversation beyond the deceptively simple question of, “Is It Open Access?” toward a more productive evaluation of “How Open Is It?”.