Open Access and Scholarly Publishing

Open Access is a mechanism to promote the availability of peer-reviewed scholarly research. Authors who wish to make their work Open Access are free to publish in preferred journals as they normally would.

• An author who publishes in a peer-reviewed subscription-based journal can make the article Open Access by depositing a copy of the post-print into an institutional repository such as Spectrum. Most journal publishers allow this. An Open Access repository is an additional venue for research articles, complementing rather than replacing current publishing practices.
• If an author publishes in a peer-reviewed Open Access journal, the article will be available immediately on the web.

There are two kinds of Open Access scholarly publishing:

• The majority of publishers follow the GREEN Road to Open Access: they allow the deposit of peer-reviewed research articles into an Open Access repository such as Spectrum. It costs nothing, except a few minutes of time.
• Certain publishers (such as the Public Library of Science, also known as PLoS) follow the GOLD Road to Open Access: authors may pay a fee to publish an article in a peer-reviewed Open Access journal that makes content freely available to everyone.

More information can be found on the SHERPA/RoMEO web site.

Major publishers that allow the published PDF version to be deposited in an institutional repository include:

• American Institute of Physics
• American Mathematical Society
• Berkeley Electronic Press
• Duke University Press
• University of California Press

Major publishers that allow the post-print (final, refereed manuscript) to be deposited in an institutional repository (sometimes with an embargo) include:

• American Association for the Advancement of Science (i.e. Science)
• Elsevier
• Institute of Physics
• Nature Publishing Group
• Oxford University Press
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• Sage Publications
• Springer-Verlag
• Taylor & Francis