Open Access is a publishing model in which peer-reviewed scholarly articles are made freely available on the internet without restrictions on subsequent use except that the work is properly attributed to the author and the author's control over the integrity of their work is preserved. It developed with the intention of giving research outputs the widest possible audience, and is enshrined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

Publishing costs are typically met by the author, rather than by subscriptions paid by individual readers and academic libraries. The traditional "subscriber pays" model has led to libraries cancelling subscriptions, as their budgets have not kept pace with subscription costs.

Many research funding bodies now require that research they fund is published according to the Open Access model.

There are two basic types of Open Access:

• Green OA - authors publish in any journal and then self-archive the postprints in their institutional repository (IR) or another OA website.
• Gold OA - authors publish in an OA journal (ie one which provides immediate open access on the publisher's website)

Open Access Week 2012

Open Access Week is an international event now in its 6th year (Twitter hashtag #oaweek)

The programme of events at Oxford is here.

Contact catherine.dockerty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for further details of any event

Presentations from Open Access Week 2012 in Oxford

• Oliver Bridle (Radcliffe Science Library)
  Y Open? Issues in Open Access for Generation Y Scientists [PPTX]
• Dr Amanda Burls (Department of Primary Care Health Sciences)
  Ethical Aspects of Open Access in Health Research [PPTX]
• Ruth Bird (Bodleian Law Library)
  Open Law: an International Perspective [PPTX]
• Sally Rumsey (ORA - Bodleian Libraries)
  Disseminating Your Research Using ORA and Symplectic [PPTX]
  Depositing Publications in ORA Using Symplectic [PDF]
• Karine Barker (Radcliffe Science Library) 
  A Round-Up of Open Access and Open Access Week [PPTX]
  Useful references [DOCX]