Open access (OA) scholarship is digital, online, and freely available to readers. Journal articles are the most common form of OA scholarship, but many scholarly books are OA as well.
Many OA works are also openly licensed, often using Creative Commons licenses. By applying an open license to their work, authors or copyright holders give readers permission to download, distribute, and sometimes translate or remix their work as long as credit is given to the creator.
The OA movement is a global initiative to make scholarship openly available for everybody to read and use. It is founded upon three important declarations that defined OA and its key principles and strategies:
The two main types of open access publishing model are Green Open Access and Gold Open Access.
Many funding agencies have adopted open access policies that require funding recipients to make their research freely accessible.
In Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institute of Health Research Open Access Policy on Publications applies to grants awarded since May 1, 2015. "The objective of this policy is to improve access to the results of Agency-funded research, and to increase the dissemination and exchange of research results. All researchers, regardless of funding support, are encouraged to adhere to this policy."
While not required, researchers holding grants that were awarded prior to May 1, 2015 are encouraged to adhere to the requirements of this policy.
The University of Victoria Libraries and our librarians, archivists, and staff are committed to open access scholarship and ensuring barrier-free access to scholarly content to the broadest possible community to increase its visibility, usage, and impact.
Read out Open Access Statement of Commitment
UVic Libraries works with publishers to arrange for waivers and discounts on article processing charges (APCs) to over 9,000 journals. Through these agreements, members of the UVic community can publish open access articles in select journals. There are two ways to explore them:
For journals that do not allow archiving of peer-reviewed manuscripts, the Tri-Agency encourages authors to retain key rights through the use of a publication addendum (e.g., CARL Canadian Author Addendum) or by inserting text into the publishing agreement, for example:
[Journal] acknowledges that the researcher will be entitled to archive an electronic copy of the final, peer-reviewed manuscript for inclusion in UVicSpace. Manuscripts archived with UVicSpace may be made freely available to the public, via the internet, within 12 months of the official date of final publication in the journal.
If you are still unsure then please contact the library and we will help you to determine whether you can deposit your publication in UVicSpace to meet your funder’s open access mandate.
Researchers who currently hold Tri-Agency grants may use those funds to pay author’s fees if they wish to publish in a fee-based open access journal. Open access author’s fees are considered eligible expenses under “Dissemination of Research Results” in the Tri-Agency’s “Use of Grant Funds” document.
Researchers who are preparing Tri-Agency proposals should be sure to include open access APCs as part of their projected expenses. APCs vary substantially from publisher to publisher, but a good rule of thumb is to budget $2500 per article.
Open access scholarly journals are subject to the same rigorous peer review that subscription-based academic journals are, and some have high impact factors. However, they use different funding models when compared to commercial journals (e.g. Wiley, Elsevier, SAGE, etc.).
The Directory of Open Access Journals provides information about thousands of peer reviewed open access journals.
See our Journal Selection and Deceptive Publishing guide for help with choosing a high-quality open access journal for your publication.
You to share a version of your manuscript freely in an open access repository (e.g., UVicSpace) or your department website to get greater visibility for your work.
Archiving your work in a repository allows you to:
Comply with funding mandates that require your work be made open access,
Preserve a copy of your work in perpetuity knowing that your work will never be lost or deleted,
Share a persistent link to your work on social media and other sites, providing stable, ongoing access.
A digital repository is an online collection of research associated with an institution or a discipline. Repositories provide barrier free online access to a range of scholarly publications such as journal articles (pre- and post-prints), conference proceedings, reports, and more. Research placed in a repository is made openly accessible.
Most major publishers will allow you to submit the post-print version (a copy of the article after peer-review, but before publisher branding and layout) to an open access repository within 12 months of publication. This option allows you to continue to publish in commercially published journals while complying with Tri-Agency open access policy on publications policy. Search the journal title at JISC's Open Policy Finder website to find out whether a specific journal allows you to share your post-print.
Send the Copyright and Scholarly Communications Office your current CV and staff will archive all your articles (where possible) to UVicSpace.
Learn more about sharing and publishing your research data.
Subject repositories, also known as pre-print servers, collect and share research outputs related to a particular subject area. colleagues in your field may search repositories for related research. Depositing your work here can also increase the reach and impact of your work.
Well-known subject repositories include:
Masters theses and PhD dissertations form a sizeable portion of scholarly research at most academic institutions. Graduate students have been submitting their theses and dissertations into UVicSpace since 2005. The collection is fully discoverable and accessible on the internet, and each title is indexed in the library catalogue.
The agencies believe that research data collected through the use of public funds should be responsibly and securely managed and be, where ethical, legal and commercial obligations allow, available for reuse by others. To this end, the agencies support the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) guiding principles for research data management and stewardship.
The agencies acknowledge the diversity of models of scientific and scholarly inquiry that advance knowledge within and across the disciplines represented by agency mandates. The agencies therefore recognize that there are legitimate differences in the standards for RDM among the disciplines, areas of research, and modes of inquiry that the agencies support.
UVic Libraries offers a number of services to support your data needs. We provide help from the moment you conceive of a project to the moment you publish about it – and long after.
The concept of Open educational resources (OER) emerged during a 2002 UNESCO Forum on Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries. The initial concept was further developed as follows:
Open Educational Resources are defined as ‘technology-enabled, open provision of educational resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.’ They are typically made freely available over the Web or the Internet. Their principle use is by teachers and educational institutions to support course development, but they can also be used directly by students. Open Educational Resources include learning objects such as lecture material, references and readings, simulations, experiments and demonstrations, as well as syllabuses, curricula, and teachers’ guides. (Wiley, 2006)
Generally accepted to be:
and has an open license that allows others to:
Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute
at a low cost
which reduces the barriers to education
To learn more about open licensing, adopting or adapting textbooks, or creating open resources
Acknowledgements
Most of the contents from this section were adapted from Goldberg, E., & LaMagna, M. (2012). Open educational resources in higher education: A guide to online resources. College & Research Libraries News, 73(6), 334-337. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.73.6.8776
The Open Science guide brings together relevant information and materials from UVic Libraries and other sources to support your understanding and engagement with Open Science and Open Scholarship.
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