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 Open Access - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)Open Access Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)The most frequently asked questions concerning Open Access are listed below. For additional information or to submit a question, please contact Ask a Librarian.
Who at MSK is publishing in Open Access journals?Many researchers at MSK are publishing in Open Access journals. View our PDF slideshow or take a look at this page to see who. Why should I make my work openly available?Papers that are made open access provide greater value to clinicians and researchers globally who cannot afford the high price of journal subscriptions where the latest studies, treatments and guidelines are published. In addition, making your work open access increases the citation impact of each paper published in this manner.I want to make my work Open Access (OA), but I only want to publish in high-impact journals and those aren't OA.It is not necessary to publish in an Open Access (OA) journal (like PLoS One) to make work open access. Publishing in OA journals is called "gold OA." Another option researchers have is to make their peer-reviewed, published work available in an institutional or discipline-specific repository, such as PubMed Central or Scientific Commons. This is called "green OA." Please note that in order to make your work available in an OA repository, you'll need to negotiate a special copyright agreement with the journal publishing your paper. Another option, commonly used in the physics community, is to make publication pre-prints available for public comment and perusal.Doesn't Open Access (OA) publishing violate copyright?Copyright is negotiated between the journal publisher and the paper's author. Authors can retain the right to deposit the final work into an OA repository when negotiating the copyright agreement. To do so, use either the SPARC author addendum or the MSKCC author addendum for NIH-funded work.Some journals are more OA friendly than others. Very few journals will forbid you outright to make your work OA, though some will insist on an embargo for a predetermined period of time. On the other hand, some journals will even deposit the work into PubMed Central for you! To check to see what each journal's copyright transfer policy is, check SHERPA/ROMEO by title. An introduction to copyright resources for authors interested in OA. How do I search Open Access (OA) literature to find papers relevant to my field?There are a variety of ways to find OA papers. Some OA journals are indexed in databases like PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science, available through the MSKCC Library. MSKCC Library also provides access to many OA journals. There are several large journal and article aggregators in which you can search for OA articles. PubMed Central is one; Scientific Commons in another. BioMed Central is a publisher of over 200 OA journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) organizes OA journals by subject. The Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) lists institutional and subject repositories containing OA papers. The Open Science Directory is a searchable database of OA science journals.Where can I learn more about the Open Access (OA) movement?Excellent educational materials about OA are available through the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Consortium (SPARC) website, as well as through other sites active in promoting OA. Here are some favorites:The Canadian Association of Research Libraries maintains a selected bibliography of papers on OA. The Public Library of Science (PLoS), of which MSKCC's own Harold Varmus is a founding member, provides informational and advocacy resources about OA. Read Harold Varmus on Why PLoS became a publisher. The Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) monitors and shares new develoments in OA. View the latest shared articles here. Peter Suber's excellent Field Guide to Misunderstandings About OA. |
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