Open Access is about making research publications (journal articles, books etc) freely available so anyone, including students, can benefit from reading and using research. However, Open Access can be more than making research available to read, it is also about allowing others to re-use that research. Open Access literature often has less restrictive copyright and licensing obstacles than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.
Most research is published in journals which require a subscription in order to view, print or download the articles in them. This restricts access to only those who can afford it or for you to be a student at university where the library pays the, often very high, subscription costs. If access to research is made more widely available, through mechanisms such as Open Access, then anyone can benefit, from small businesses to schools, NGOs, communities and students!
Have a look at the following video to find out more about what Open Access is all about.
PHD Comics (2012) Open Access Explained! 26th October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY (Accessed 29 April 2023).
One of the best ways to find Open Access content is from an institutional repository (IR). An institutional repository is an online collection of scholarly materials (journal articles, books) produced by researchers at a University. The University of Derby's Open Access repository is called UDORA (University of Derby Online Research Archive). It is a publicly accessible repository of University of Derby (UoD) research publications and other research outputs
Other useful institutional repositories include:
ORA or Oxford University Research Archive - holds over 270, 000 items including articles, conference papers, theses, research data, working papers, posters and other content types.
Apollo the IR for the University of Cambridge - research outputs include, but are not limited to, publications, conference proceedings, book chapters, monographs, theses, various forms of research data (video recordings, spreadsheets, computational scripts, code, images etc.), presentations and others. Holds over 290, 000 items.
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CORE hosts the world’s largest collection of open access full texts, which are used by people from around the world. Just type in your keywords to search over 200 million records. Another useful feature of CORE is that if the paper you're looking for isn't available Open Access then CORE will suggest other papers on the same topic that are Open Access |
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DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.” (DOAJ). The DOAJ currently includes over 16,000 journals from 125 different countries. You can use DOAJ to search for and find Open Access journals and articles which you can then download directly from the publisher’s website. |
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DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data is freely available. |
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OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search through thousands of open access repositories at once |
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UCL Press is a leading open access scholarly publisher, publishing mainly scholarly monographs, textbooks and journals. Everything they publish is available to download freely in PDF form or to read online anywhere in the world, without the need to log in. |
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Open Book Publishers are the leading independent Open Access publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the UK. They are committed to making high quality research freely available to readers around the world. Access all their books online or download them for free. |
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Open Access Button works by the title, weblink or citation of an article being entered into its search function. It will then search online repositories to see if there is an open access version available and, if there is, it will link you through to it. If an article is not available in an open access format, a request can be sent through to the author via the website. Open Access Button also offers a browser extension option for Chrome and Firefox . |
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Unpaywall is a free browser extension which lets you know whether there is an open access version of a publication available. The Unpaywall plugin works with Chrome and Firefox. When you visit an article on a publisher's platform, the Unpaywall icon which will display on the right hand side of your browser will turn green if it detects there is an open access version available on a repository system. Clicking the green Unpaywall icon will then link through to the available version it has found. Its fast, free and legal! If Unpaywall cannot locate an openly available version then it will display a grey lock symbol. |
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Open Access Button works by the title, weblink or citation of an article being entered into its search function. It will then search online repositories to see if there is an open access version available and, if there is, it will link you through to it. If an article is not available in an open access format, a request can be sent through to the author via the website. Open Access Button offers a browser extension option for Chrome and Firefox . |
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CORE Discovery is a free browser plug-in that enables you to find access to full-text articles. A useful feature of CORE Discovery is that if the paper you're looking for isn't available Open Access, then CORE will suggest other papers on the same topic that are Open Access. |
