Open Access

Introduction

Open Access (OA) is a term used to denote free, online content. Sometimes a distinction is made between gratis and libre Open Access, where gratis means free, and libre means unrestricted. Open Access is usually used in conjuntion with scholarly content; i.e. scientific papers and books. There are two major ways towards Open Access:

Golden OA

Also known as authour-pays or publication-fee models. The basic idea is to reverse the revenue stream known from commercial literature, so that the author pays to get published while the consumers have free access to the material. This is due to the fact that the authors of scientific journal articles never get paid to publish anyway. Their compensation lies in recognition and citations. Also, in practice it is the author's institutions that pay the fees that pay for the peer review, editing and publication process.

Green OA

Also known as self-archiving. The basic idea is that authors of scholarly material archives their work in institutional or (more rarely) subject-based digital archives called repositories. Many commercial publishers accept self-archiving on part of the authors. Access to the repositories is free.

DEFF's role

DEFF works to promote Open Access. DEFF has been mandate to do its part to ensure that publicly funded research becomes publicly availble. DEFF had a large role to play in the Open Access Committee's work and subsequent report to the minister of science, technology and innovation, DEFF has funded the Danish Open Access Network, DEFF is a partner in the international network Knowledge Exchange, and DEFF collaborates with the Nordic programme Nordbib.