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Institutional Repository: Open Access Publishing

Open Access Myth vs. Fact

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides alternative licenses to Copyright. Creative Commons licenses allow individuals to identify how they wish their content to be attributed, reused, remixed and/or shared.

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Open Access Publishing

What is Open Access?
“Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions....[It] is a kind of access, not a kind of business model, license or content” Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project

Types of Open Access:

To find open access journals, search the Directory of Open Access Journals

To evaluate the quality of an OA journal, use the Open Access Journal Quality Indicators created by Grand Valley State University.

To search the self-archiving policies of academic journals, search the Sherpa/Romeo database.

Unethical publishers are sometimes called "predatory publishers." Some "publishers" contact new authors (particularly graduate/undergraduate student authors) and "offer" to publish their work in exchange for the copyright. Others create a fake journal which is not peer-reviewed or edited, and they charge authors for publishing in said journal. Contact Beth Transue for help avoiding or identifying predatory publishers.

How to make your work Open Access Gold or Green


Open Educational Resources (OERs) are part of a larger conversation about scholarly communications. We want to help students have access to knowledge and high quality educational materials at a greatly reduced price. If you create or modify your own OER, it can be included and shared in the Institutional Repository.

Your work, your rights