What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) literature is digital, free of charge, and available to anyone online. The goal is to provide unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly research, while protecting traditional quality controls like peer-review and editorial oversight.
Open Access Facts
Open Access at FSU
FSU Faculty's Open Access Resolution
October 2011 – FSU's Faculty Senate unanimously approved an Open Access Resolution. The resolution is an endorsement of the principle that scholarly research should be widely shared, and an expression of support for University Libraries as they continue to explore this topic and offer services and support it.
FSU's Diginole Commons
DigiNole Commons is FSU's institutional repository, dedicated to preserving and providing open access to the scholarly research and creative work of the University. FSU Libraries staff works with university departments, research centers, and individual faculty to select, submit, and manage rights prior to ingesting content to the repository.
How Can Faculty Participate? It is a commonly held misconception that "doing open access" simply means publishing in new, online-only journals. In fact, that is only one of two totally different methods of making research open and accessible. Placing peer-reviewed, accepted for publication manuscripts in an open access institutional repository accomplishes the exact same goal.
Participating in open access archiving does not have any affect on how, in which journals, and why you publish. Most high-impact, prestigious journals in many disciplines, including those published by Wiley, Elseveir and Springer, already allow authors to archive versions of their articles in an institutional repository, or digital archive. Making scholarly research available in an open access repostory allows your work to be discoverable and accessible to a wider audience.
Micah Vandegrift, Scholarly Communications Librarian, manages FSU's institutional repository called DigiNole Commons. The purpose of the repository to archive, preserve and make accessible the scholarly output of Florida State University, focusing specifically on peer-reviewed, published or accepted-for-publication works. Additionally, DigiNole Commons can be used to support different forms of publications and research, where it best represents the scholarly pursuits of our faculty and university.
Please contact Micah Vandegrift (mvandegrift@fsu.edu) if you'd like to explore open access archiving as a means to make your scholarship widely and broadly discoverable on the open web.
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Open Access for Faculty
What you can do:
Work with your Scholarly Communications Librarian to retain the right to deposit your work in an institutional repository.
Why:
Studies show that open access research has significant increases in citation impact, and a repository offers a central, permanent location to archive and preserve your scholarly record.
How:
Contact Micah Vandegrift at mvandegrift@fsu.edu or 645-9756.
Open Access for Grad Students
What you can do:
Scrutinize your publishing contracts before signing them and make sure to consider future uses of your work.
Ask your mentors and peers why the scholarly publishing system is the way it is, and if it currently serves the scholarly community best.
Get informed about the facts of open access to combat the misinformation that your field may hold about it.
Why:
Technology offers evolving ways of sharing your work. Utilizing new media for scholarly work can make you an appealing scholar who is preemptively embracing the future of scholarly publishing. Publishers only NEED the right to publish your work. Often they ask for full transfer of copyright, which means you will no longer own the work you put so much effort to build a career on.
How: Schedule a meeting with FSU's Scholarly Communications Librarian to discuss your rights as an author, and how scholarly publishing is changing.
Consider the dissemination mechanism of your research. Are you reaching the broadest audience and ensuring maximum citation impact?
Be vocal about your concerns. Ask journal editors to consider releasing your work online. Advocate within your professional organizations for the field to embrace digital technology, as scholarship internationally is moving that direction.
Open Access for Undergraduates
What you can do:
Advocate for FSU's Student Government Association to pass a resolution supporting open access to scholarly works.
Why:
Access to information is a right, not a privilege. Taxpayers should have access to the research their dollars fund.
How:
Check out the Right To Research Coalition.
Talk to your professors about how they share their research. Ask why its not available online for bright high school kids to read.
Find out how much your library is spending on journal subscriptions. Ask why.
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