Open access is free, unrestricted online access to scholarly articles. What it means to academia and research is that cost and access restrictions are removed from the equation, allowing free access to peer-reviewed, scholarly works, books, and just about any other electronic print material with the designation.
On February 6, 2017, University Senate adopted an Open Access Policy. Visit Open Access @ SBU to see the SBU Open Access Policy, deposit your work, request a waiver and more!
Open Access works fall under two main publishing categories:
Green Open Access
Free online access to peer-reviewed materials provided by the author (self archived, or published in an institutional repository).
Gold Open Access
Free online access provided by the journal itself, whether the journal is subscription-based, APC (article processing charge)-based, or subsidized. Open access journals can be searchable within a digital publisher’s collection. For example, EBSCO allows the user to limit searching to open access journals.
The Academic Commons is an open access scholarly repository and publishing platform for the Stony Brook University community. Works in Academic Commons are: freely accessible online, regularly backed up, easily discoverable via search engines, and assigned a permanent URL so they can always be found.
In addition to research articles, use Academic Commons to share your manuscripts, open textbooks and more. Academic Commons supports a variety of file formats, and we encourage you to deposit related materials with your texts (including data, images, audio and video).
Begin sharing your research and creative work Visit commons.library.stonybrook.edu, or contact Mona Ramonetti, Head of Scholarly Communication, to discuss Academic Commons, open access or other scholarly communication topics. Email Mona.Ramonetti@stonybrook.edu call 631.632.1740.
Open Access Week is a worldwide event designed to promote open access as the new default in scholarly research and publishing. Now in its eighth year of events, current and past events are archived on its website.
Open Access by Peter Suber, cited above, is a pivotal work in the field and an approachable introduction to the basics of Open Access.
This guide will provide you with an introduction to Open Access (OA). Open Access is quickly growing in the academic community as a way to freely share and disseminate information equal in quality (i.e. peer reviewed) and reliability to traditionally published resources.
Unpaywall is a Chrome and Firefox browser extension that discovers and links to green open access manuscripts of published research and scholarly articles.
Unpaywall taps into content from thousands of open-access repositories worldwide. For more information see the Unpaywall FAQ.
Open Access Button is an open access article discovery service and browser plugin. Legally shared, full-text scholarship and peer-reviewed articles can be found using Open Access Button. Thanks to the efforts of librarians, scholars, and technologists –and the Open Access movement– it’s easier than ever to legally and freely read millions of articles. Open Access Button sources include all of the aggregated repositories in the world.
Content used with permission by Rachel Baum / CC NC BY
Do you want to learn more about the Creative Commons?
Library Administration: 631.632.7100
