Open Access Resources for Authors
You’ll find many excellent resources on the Web that explain fundamental aspects of open access publishing, its benefits, how it might be economically sustained, and practical tips for taking advantage of all it offers authors and publishers. We heartily recommend, for example,
- ARL’s Create Change
- SPARC, The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
- SPARC Open Access Newsletter (monthly)
- Peter Suber’s Open Access News
- Articles by Alma Swan, such as Open Access and the Progress of Science and Open access: what is it and why should we have it?
- Roy Rosenzweig’s, Should Historical Scholarship Be Free?
Additionally, if you are an author, you can learn about open access journals in your field of research. The following resources are helpful:
- The Directory of Open Access Journals
- I recently used the directory to determine which journals in my field were open access.
- Lund University Libraries’ Journal Info
- Each journal record provides this information:
- Reader accessibility: Open access or not, permission of author’s self-archiving, etc.
- Cost: Subscription price per article and per citation
- Quality: Where the journal is indexed, Eigenfactor, etc.
- Each journal record provides this information:
If you place articles or other documents you’ve written on your Website or in an institutional repository, you can clearly specify for readers the rights you would like them to have by placing a Creative Commons license on the front page of your online document, like the CC license I have prominently displayed in the sidebar of this blog. The Public Library of Science (PloS) applies the Creative Commons Attribution License to all works published. BioMed Central uses open access agreements drawn from Creative Commons license. In each case, the use of a clear license eliminates ambiguity about what readers can do with the materials they find online, encouraging use in accordance with the author’s wishes.
