Open Access - free access to publications
In recent years, prices of traditional subscription-based journals have increased dramatically and access to scientific content has become a question of resources. Open access (OA) is an attempt to counteract this trend by making scientific research publications freely accessible to anyone.
The basic idea is to make scientific publications freely accessible to anyone, regardless of their of their background, residence or education level. Usage includes reading, downloading, copying and disseminating scientific research findings online under the prerequisite that the source is properly cited and that content is not distorted.
Free availability will promote research dissemination more effectively and gives great advantages to the authors who generally keep their copyright and can use their material according to their own needs, e.g. for teaching,
Other benefits include:
- Promotion of knowledge: everyone can get access to research results worldwide, even in poor regions.
- Improved conditions for researchers: researchers can easily access other people's research.
- Repetition of experiments can be avoided, results can be extended and new partnerships established.
- Easier to link performance to social media, providing even greater spread.
- Quicker publication: Between the article is accepted and published will be shorter.
- Taxpayers who pay a large portion of the world's research can take part of the results.
- Innovation: Access to Research promotes innovation and can lead to new ideas and products.
- Free access to open access publications does not mean that everyone can publish in open access journals.
It is important to note that trustworthy open access journals have the same procedures for peer-review as traditional journals. More and more of them are also starting to get indexed in important scientific databases and achieve "impact factors".
Many funding agencies, such as the Swedish Research Council and Formas supports today OA trend and requires that research funded by them should be made freely available.