What does open access mean?
Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project, provides this definition: “Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder” (2004). For more information on this topic, please consult his very brief overview.
One of the largest OA digital repositories is The Directory of Open Access Journals or DOAJ. Launched in 2003 at Lund University, Sweden, with 300 open access journals, it currently has over 9000 open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science and humanities.
The Open Access Directory (OAD) maintains a current list of open access repositories organized by discipline here.
This video provides a brief tutorial on Open Access.
Please contact the Reference Desk (https://iot.libanswers.com/search/?q=OPAC&t=0 or 559-234-3274) if you would like assistance finding open access materials.
You may also want to consider:
- How do I access full articles without paying for them?
- How do I find articles with full text online?
References
Suber, Peter. (2004). A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm