What does Open Access mean?
Simply that everything that we publish is freely available online throughout the world, not only for you to read, but also to download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish. No permission is required. Read a detailed definition. If you haven’t got time to read this, there are two things you need to know:
1. Authors retain copyright, under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
2. No permission or fees are required to use – or reuse – the content, as long as the original authors are properly cited.
Why is Open Access important and better than just free access?
Published research results and ideas are the foundation for future progress in science and medicine. Open Access publishing therefore leads to wider dissemination of information and increased efficiency in science, by providing:
- Open Access To Ideas.
Whether you are a patient seeking health information, an educator wishing to enliven a lesson plan, or a researcher looking to formulate a hypothesis, making papers freely and openly available online provides you with access to reliable peer-reviewed scientific information and discoveries for you to use or reuse as you need. - Open Access To The Broadest Audience.
As a researcher, publishing in an open-access journal allows anyone with an interest in your work to read it and build on it- and that translates into increased usage and impact.
Open Access is more than just free access to research information; there is vast untapped potential for data mining and knowledge discovery, which is only possible when the research literature is not constrained behind access barriers but is published under a license that facilitates use and reuse.
PLoS and Open Access
PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource. PLoS’s first action was to circulate an open letter encouraging scientific publishers to make the research literature available for distribution through free online public archives. Read the Frequently Asked Questions about Open Access on the PLoS website and more about PLoS Medicine’s scope and how Open Access publishing can help address the world’s health priorities in our April 2009 Editorial.
Your Research and Open Access
Major funders such as the NIH, HHMI, Wellcome Trust, all 7 UK Research Councils and the MRC want both researchers and the public to have access to the work that they fund and now require researchers they fund to make their work freely available..
Authors can easily comply with the open-access requirements of their funders or institutions by publishing in PLoS Medicine (or any other PLoS journal) because we publish your work under an Open Access Creative Commons Attribution License, and we will automatically deposit your work in PubMed Central. It requires absolutely no effort from you – we take the strain!
Some other organizations, such as the Max Planck Institute, also support Open Access by paying the publication fees of their researchers; other organizations do so by becoming Institutional Members of PLoS, which allows some of their scientists to benefit from a discount on their publication fee.
Want to read more about Open Access?
Peter Suber’s blog, Open Access News, provides an up to date, comprehensive of everything you need to know about open access.
Open Access Week
Finally, the Open Access community unites behind Open Access Week (co-organized by PLoS, SPARC and Students for Free Culture plus others) which will run from October 19-23, 2009.