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E-Reference: Scholarly Communication

Why and How Open Access Publishing?

Open Access (OA) is free online access to the full text of research articles for anyone, webwide. 

Research made available via open access is becoming increasingly cited and many open-access journals are now peer reviewed.

Two models:

Self-Archiving in:

  • Institutional repositories, e.g.Tufts Digital Repository TDL
  • Subject or discipline–specific repositories, e.g.
    • arXiv.org (Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics);
    • RePEc (Economics)

Publishing in an open access journal:

OA may lead to

  • Increased visibility, exposure, usage & impact of research.
  • Readership expanded beyond subscribers to journals in which the research is published.
  • Research impact has been typically measured by tools such as ISI Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports. Tools like Google Scholar measure impact of a wider range of papers.

The Effect of Open Access and Downloads ('hits') on Citation Impact: A Bibliography of Studies

The Open Access Citation Advantage: Studies and Results to Date

Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography

 

Open Access Publishing Opportunities

 Examples of OA publishing initiatives

Information for Authors

Internet Tools