1. Opening access to quality research materials
Tracy Kent
openaccess/index.shtml

2. Open Access
The open-access (OA) movement aims to increase the impact of scholarly research by supporting web access to research findings
Publications are free of charge to users, worldwide, including those without traditional access to academic journals (eg practitioners, those in developing countries)

3. Open access benefits
freely available material becomes more accessible and discoverable worldwide
leads to greater visibility and impact of research including increased citations
ensures publicly funded work is available to all
For users open access is barrier-free and payment-free providing access to information they need

4. A new publishing model However
Open access is NOT cost-free publication - costs still have to be met but in a new way as part of the research process
Open access is NOT low-quality publication – 5000 peer-reviewed open access journals available (according to DOAJ*) *Directory of Open Access journals

5. What Open Access is not
It is NOT self-publishing, nor a way to bypass peer-review and publication,
is it NOT a kind of second-class, cut-price publishing route.
It is simply a means to make research results freely available online to the whole research community.

6. How do you find Open Access materials?

7. Resources for locating OA materials
Google/Google Scholar
open access content is linked directly
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Not just a directory. Search contents of the journals and locate suitable journals
Subject databases on eLibrary
Web of Knowledge; Sociological abstracts; Biological sciences, etc
Scirus
Science, psychology and language search engine

8. Links to full text articles
and repository content
from Google Scholar

9. Searchable database
and browsable list

10. Resources for locating OA materials
PubMed/UKPubMed
Contains individual journal articles and other materials
Directory of Open Access repositories (OpenDOAR)
Not just a directory. Search for repositories by content, geography, etc including Cogprints, Arxiv and RePeC
University of Birmingham repositories
Eprints, epapers, etheses
All Listed on eLibrary
Google scholar : exclusion, substance misuse and schools (note green triangles)

11. Some other examples of repositories
Education Line : interviewing as browse (article on evalution search strategies)

12. ETheses Online Service (EThOS)
The EThOS Service allows you to search for electronic Doctoral theses produced in other UK HEIs
The theses from most institutions will be free to download and print
If a thesis is unavailable it will be possible to request that it is digitised
Can access EThOS from any computer worldwide:
Replaces the British Library (microfilm) Theses Service

13. Selecting Open Access sources
The evaluation process is the same for you:
Credibility of the Author
Validity of the Methodology
Rigour of the Peer-Review
Reputation of the Venue 13

14. How do you publish on Open Access?

15. Two Primary Paths to OA Self-Archiving (Green OA)
The author takes initiative to place the document into a publicly accessible forum Could be Institutional or subject based
cross searchable on the web via Google and Google Scholar
Open-Access Publication (Gold OA)
The author chooses a publication venue that accommodates publication cost somewhere other than at the point of access
Green route often seen as more useful because
: preserves author freedom to submit work to a journal of their choice AND maximises choice of reading Open Access.
About 15% of peer reviewed journals are Open Access so not really enough to support GOLD at the moment.
Green Open Access compatible with either Open Access or Subscription journals.
63% of subscription journals give blanket permission for their authors to self archive in OA repositories and essentially all Open Access journals do. .

16. Open Access Journals conduct peer review
typically let authors retain copyright.
Have wide ranging publishers
Not-for-profit (e.g. Society / Funding Agencies / Public Library of Science or PLoS)
For-profit (e.g. BioMed Central).

17. Summary Wide range of resources to locate open access materials
Depositing in UBIRA is strongly encouraged by the university and is to the benefit all
Benefits for authors and researchers
openaccess/index.shtml