Open Access in Context

The transition from traditional publishing models, where researchers mainly aim to publish in high-impact journals regardless of whether publishers are going to provide free access to the research output, to a new model, that requires researchers to publish only in open access journals, is not expected to be a smooth process. 

SOAP – Study of Open Access Publishing (http://project-soap.eu/) was a two-year project, concluded in 2011, funded by the European Commission aiming ‘to deliver to the European Commission, publishers, libraries and research communities a description and analysis of models of open access publishing, so that these key players may ascertain which model, or combination and variation of models, will enable them to make a smooth transition to open access publishing’.  It produced valuable resources and gathered extensive data on scholar attitudes and Open Access publishing models, all of which are available on their website.  The video containing a talk given during the SOAP Symposium in Berlin in 2011 on '

' is worth watching.

Open Access publishing includes monographs as well as papers.  For example, OAPEN - Open Access Publishing in European Networks (http://www.oapen.org/) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.  Its library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe.

One of the concerns of researchers regarding publishing in Open Access publications and platforms online has been the findability and visibility of their work.  However, there is a growing number of reputable Open Access journals and Open Access institutional and subject repositories.  These journals and repositories, as well as their contents, are indexed by databases such as DOAJ and OpenDOAR.  Their contents are also searchable via Google Scholar.

DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/) lists Open Access journals and searches their contents.  Try the database below:

OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories (http://www.opendoar.org/) lists academic Open Access repositories and searches their contents.  Try the database below: