Open Access
Open access is a broad international academic movement that seeks free and open online access to academic information, such as publications and data. When anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search for and search within the information, or use it in education or another way within the legal agreements, the publication is called 'open access', as there are no financial, legal or technical barriers. The principles of open access are set out in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003).
There are two ways of achieving open access:
Gold open access: Publication via publisher platforms, in open access journals. This route is in most cases not free. The publication costs, known as ‘article processing costs’ (APCs), are paid by the author or his or her institution. A list of open access journals that are accessible worldwide can be found on the DOAJ website.
Green open access: The full text of academic publications is deposited in a repository, a publicly accessible database managed by a research organization.
The benefits of Open Access:
- An acceleration of scientific information interchange
- Extension of scientific information availability
- Increase in the visibility of scientific information
- Increase in the number of readers
- Increase in citation impact
Helpful links:
- Fact sheet: Open Access in Horizon 2020
- Open Access CZ
- SHERPA/RoMEO - Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- Open Access Explained video from PhD Comics
- Discussion of arguments for and against Open Access
- Article on ‘From Open Access to Open Science from the viewpoint of a scholarly publisher’
- FABIÁN, Ondřej. Open access in the Czech Republic: an overview.
- DĚDIČOVÁ, Petra et al. Otevřený přístup k vědeckým informacím: současný stav v České republice a ve světě.
