Scholarly Communication & Open Access
Open Access encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.
Open Access is the principle that all research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication, and it's gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers throw their weight behind it. [From the openaccessweek.org website]. There are two routes to open access:
- publishing in an openly accessible journal, monograph etc.
- archiving your work in a research repository such as TSpace, ArXiv etc.
Information for Faculty
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has issued an Intellectual Property Advisory, advising scholars to retain their copyright.
Use the SHERPA RoMEO website to find the copyright & self-archiving policies of all major journal publishers.
Use the SPARC Canadian Author Addendum to ensure you retain your author copyright and afford the widest possible distribution and impact for your scholarly work.
Use Creative Commons licenses on your work. These provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.
Improve the visibility of your work by submitting copies of your publications to an Open Access Repository, including the U of T's research repository, TSpace.
Heighten the impact of your work by publishing in Open Access Journals.
Open Access Initiatives at the University of Toronto
U of T Libraries hosted several events during Open Access Week 2009.
University Libraries host services for conferences and electronic journals. Any faculty or student journal can be hosted with us.
TSpace, is the university's research repository.
U of T Libraries are giving global exposure to valuable research collections.
The School of Graduate Studies and TSpace are working together to make U of T Theses and Dissertations freely accessible online.
Funding Agencies
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research require that all research papers from its funded projects are freely accessible online within six months of publication and that bioinformatics, atomic, and molecular coordinate data be deposited into a public database immediately upon publication of research results.
Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has endorsed the principle of open access and is moving to increase awareness, pursue discussions with major stakeholders, and gradually incorporate open access provisions in research support programs.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy requires that its funded investigators deposit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts in PubMed Central, NIH's online digital archive, for free public access within 12 months of journal publication. NIH also allows grant funds to be used to pay journal publication fees.
Learn More about Open Access
Harvard University Unanimously Votes 'Yes' for Open Access.
MIT faculty open access to their scholarly articles. MIT also pioneered the OpenCourseWare project offering free lecture notes, exams and other resources from more than 1,800 courses spanning the institute's entire curriculum. About a million students, self-learners, and educators from almost every country visit the site each month.
The Create Change website will help you understand the changing landscape and how it affects you and your research. It also offers practical ways to look out for your own interests as a researcher.
The Open Access Directory is a huge compendium of all things Open Access.
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) maintains a site for those interested in pursuing open access publication or advocating for open access to others in the academic community, to grant-making institutions, or even to bodies of government.
The Gerstein Science Information Centre provides a research guide on Open Access.
Contact:
Rea Devakos
Coordinator, Scholarly Communications
E: reaDOTdevakosATutorontoDOTca
B: 416 946 0133
Adapted, with permission from: Open Access at Memorial University http://www.library.mun.ca/openaccess_2009.php.
