Open Access for development
Open Access has numerous benefits for both authors and publishers including wider dissemination, multiple degrees of copyright and cost effectiveness. Furthermore, it has wider advantages for people in resource poor settings and those working in the field of development.
Eldis supports the distribution of free online and offline information, self-archiving and creative commons.
- Open licenses promise significant value for funders, grantees and for the public good
- A new report examines the extent to which charitable foundations are aware of and have begun to use open licenses such as Creative Commons or the GPL. It highlights examples where foundations have begun to take advantage of new licensing models for materials and resources produced by their own staff, their consultants and their grantees.
The following pages will outline the options available for authors and publishers wishing to use open access in promoting research.
For authors
As an author you have two options for making your work available free of charge to all audiences – in other words Open Access. One is to publish in a peer-reviewed open access journal making your research immediately available to all audiences without subscription. The second option is to publish in a subscription based peer-reviewed journal and then self- archive your work in an open access repository, The following segments will outline these options further. More..
For publishers
As a publisher you may have some reservations about open access due to issues surrounding copyright of your publications. There are ways that you can retain certain rights to your publications and at the same time support open access. One way is through an alternative copyright agreement like the Creative Commons which allows for varying levels of licensing agreements, enabling publishers/ editors to choose from a range of possibilities. More...
Recommended reading
- Open access publishing: a developing country view
- ( J. I. Papin–Ramcharan;R.A. Dawe / First Monday (USA) , 2006)
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This paper presents the experience with open access (OA) publishing by researchers in an academic research institution, the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad and Tobago. It descr...
- Open access archiving: the fast track to building research capacity in developing countries
- ( L. Chan;B. Kirsop;S. Arunachalam / SciDev.Net – the Science and Development Network , 2005)
- Scientific progress in developing and emerging countries is greatly hampered by their inability to afford essential journals. At the same time, research generated in these regions is 'missing' to the ...
- Open Access: scientific publishing and the developing world
- ( First Author , 2006)
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Advances in science, medicine, technology and agriculture have the potential to contribute to the reduction of disease and poverty worldwide. Communications and information technology (ICT) ha...
