Open Access: Open Access

The Open Access Tracking Project provides real-time alert service for news about open access and other scholarly communication topics. 

"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.  What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder."  (quoted from A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber)

The open access movement promotes the practice that scholarly publications are made available online without prohibitively high access costs and stringent copyright and licensing restrictions.  It facilitates quicker and broader dissemination of knowledge by removing the price and permission barriers to research outcomes. 

Open access is compatible with features of traditional publishing such as peer review, journal prestige, and researchers' career advancement.  It also offers many advantages, including:

• Quicker publishing time
• Enhanced discoverability through search engines
• Increased readership
• Increased citations (see SPARC Europe's list of studies about the citation advantage of open access)
• Availability of download statistics

These books provide excellent introduction to open access:

• Open Access by Peter Suber (This book is complemented by a Web site.)
• Understanding Open Access: When, Why, & How to Make Your Work Openly Accessible by the Authors Alliance
• Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future by Martin Paul Eve 

The SPARC Weekly aggregates online news stories and blog posts about scholarly communication.