Open Access (OA) is free and unrestricted access to research publications, research data, and other published research output that can be read, copied, reused, distributed, and used for automated content analysis without copyright infringing.
Open access to research publications and research data increases the transparency of scientific processes and trust in science, allows for the replication of studies and verification of their results, and promotes scientific progress and innovation by using data for new analyses.
“Benefits of Open Access” by Danny Kingsley & Sarah Brown is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Open access to publications can be ensured through different publishing models. Publishers may offer the option to publish articles in open access, or open access can be achieved by depositing a publication or its postprint in an open access repository. The most common open access (OA) models are presented below.
| Green OA | The author may publish, deposit, or make the article freely available in institutional or other repositories. However, depending on the agreement with the publisher, this may be done immediately after the article is published on the publisher’s website or after an embargo period set by the publisher. This method of ensuring access to scholarly output is also known as self-archiving. |
| Gold OA | A publishing model in which a published article becomes immediately available to users free of charge. An Article Processing Charge (APC) is typically applied for the publication of an article, which is paid by the author or the institution representing the author. Copyright to the publications remains with the author (it is not transferred to the publisher), so attribution is required when using open access content. The Gold access model is most commonly applied in full open access (Full OA) or Hybrid* access journals. |
| Bronze OA | Publications with this type of access are freely available only on websites owned by the publisher, but do not have a license that would allow them to be reused (e.g., in educational materials, etc.). Furthermore, the publisher may change the publication’s access conditions at any time at their discretion (e.g., make it paywalled). For these reasons, this publishing model is not considered true open access. |
| Diamond OA | This publishing model differs from the Gold Open Access model in that the author publishing their article does not pay any article processing charges (APCs). The funding institution covers these costs. This model is most commonly used by university presses, where article processing charges and publishing costs are covered by university funds. |
* A Hybrid or mixed-access journal is a scientific journal that provides open access only to those articles for which the publication costs have been covered by the author or the author’s institution, while access to the remaining articles is available only to subscribers who pay a subscription fee.
Copyright encompasses both the economic and moral rights of the author to an intellectual (artistic, technical, or other) work.
Copyright is an important part of intellectual property. Copyright regulates the author’s rights to the authorship of a work and defines the author’s right to income derived from the use of the work.
The international document protecting copyright is the Berne Convention, which has been signed by nearly all countries in the world, including Lithuania. In Lithuania, copyright is regulated by the Law on Copyright and Related Rights, adopted in 1999. “Law on Copyright and Related Rights of the Republic of Lithuania. (https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/legalAct/lt/TAD/TAIS.81676)”
As open access publishing grows, many funding agencies are adopting open access policies that ensure free access to research results and their publications. This facilitates their reuse.
Licenses
Copyright ensures legal protection of an author’s or creator’s intellectual property.
In traditional publishing, publishers often require authors to grant the publisher exclusive rights to the work when signing a publishing contract. In this way, the publisher acquires the rights to reproduce, distribute, and publicly perform the work, but the author retains their intellectual property rights as the author (e.g., the title of the work cannot be changed without the author’s consent, the author may object to an inaccurate translation, etc.).
Authors should be informed that they are not required to transfer all rights to the publisher to publish an article, and that when signing a publishing agreement, they may choose which rights are transferred to the publisher and which are retained by the author.
Authors are encouraged to retain their rights so that unlimited open access can be provided to readers. It is recommended to apply an open-access license to the work so that access and reuse of rights are clearly defined for every end user.
Creative Commons (CC) licenses are well-suited for this purpose. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization whose goal is to help authors share their works and create new works based on them without infringing copyright.
Types of licenses according to Creative Commons:
| Creative Commons license type | Is it permitted to use the work for commercial purposes? | Is it permissible to modify or adapt a work? |
| CC BY | + | + |
| CC BY-SA * | + | + |
| CC BY-ND | + | – |
| CC BY-NC | – | + |
| CC BY-NC-SA | – | + |
| CC BY-NC-ND | – | – |
Based on Creative Commons, source.
* Differs from CC BY in that derivative works must also be licensed under CC BY-SA.
Useful links:
The Open Policy Finder tool (Jisc, formerly Sherpa Romeo/Juliet) provides information on the open access policies of publishers, individual journals, and research funding agencies, including embargo periods, repositories, metadata, and other relevant details.
You can search for open access journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ is a unique and comprehensive directory of various open access journals from around the world, supported by a constantly growing community. The DOAJ aims to ensure that high-quality content is freely available to everyone online. The directory allows you to search for open access articles and journals. Information about article processing charges (APCs), licenses, and more is provided alongside the journals.
If you plan to publish in an open-access journal, it is recommended that the journal you choose be indexed in DOAJ.
The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), established in 2012, is a service aimed at increasing the visibility and discoverability of open access books. Academic publishers are invited to submit metadata for their open access books to the DOAB system. Data aggregators can integrate the records into their commercial services, and libraries can integrate them into their online catalogs, thereby helping researchers and students discover books.
The catalog is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer-reviewed books in accordance with open access principles.
Information is being prepared.
