Open Access

Open Access resources remove the barrier of subscription fees from the reader by providing free access to scholarly research. There are different kinds of Open Access publishing models. For example, Green Open Access publishers will publish an article in a subscription journal and also allow the author to publish a previous version of that article in an Open Access repository. On the other hand, Gold Open Access publishers immediately make articles available in Open Access journals and fund those journals by author processing fees instead of subscriptions. Green and gold are just two of many Open Access models. 

Open Access resources are freely and immediately available, and most are published under a Creative Commons license, which allows readers to use the information with fewer restrictions than regular copyright. To learn more about the different kinds of Creative Commons licenses, visit creativecommons.org.

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There are lots of sources of Open Access articles. Here is a list of some of the best databases, aggregators, publisher websites, and repositories where you can search for resources on your topic:

• arXiv.org - Cornell University provides scholarly Open Access articles in the following fields: physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.
• BioMed Central - BMC publishes a large number of journals in biomedicine and related scientific fields. Explore a list of journals by subject or browse article collections by subject.
• Digital Commons Network - The Digital Commons Network brings together thousands of peer-reviewed resources in the full spectrum of academic disciplines. 
• Directory of Open Access Books - Four Open Access publishers make all their offerings easily discoverable through the DOAJ. 
• Directory of Open Access Journals - Over 15,000 journals from all over the world are indexed in DOAJ. Articles are easy to find by using the searchbar or through browsing by subject. 
• EarthArxiv - The California Digital Library offers this repository for pre-prints of earth science research articles. 
• Elsevier Open Access - Find free scholarly journals from one of the top scientific publishers using Elsevier's list of Open Access journals.
• Open Directory of Open Access Repositories - To find even more repositories of Open Access resources in other subjects, try searching OpenDOAR.
• JSTOR - JSTOR provides some content free of charge and makes it easy to search for free content using this search page. 
• Learning Commons - This discovery search by the library at North Shore Technical Community College provides one-click access to open access journal articles from across open access repositories, plus open access journals that are published within subscription journals like Nature and The Leadership Quarterly. 
• PLOS - The Public Library of Science publishes peer-reviewed scientific journals under the following titles: PLOS ONE, PLOS Biology, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and PLOS Pathogens.
• PubMed Central - PMC is a full-text archive of journal articles in biomedical and life sciences provided by the National Institute of Health.
• ​​​​​​​Project Gutenburg - Project Gutenburg makes older books that are no longer under copyright freely available digitally.
• SpringerOpen - The scientific publisher Springer provides some content freely on its website, avaiable by browsing the journal list on the SprinterOpen page. 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely available teaching materials, which often take the form of electronic textbooks. They could also be videos, presentation slides, lesson plans, lecture outlines, quizzes, or any other type of educational resource. 

Like Open Access journals, OER are usually published under a Creative Commons license, so they are available to be used in classes without asking permission, as long as you credit the original author.  Some Creative Commons licenses also allow derivative works, which means you could take the resource and adapt it to suit your class setting, again without asking permission from the original author. 

Since they are freely available and can be used without obtaining permission, OER remove the large barrier of high textbook prices for students and provide instructors with flexibility for the unique needs of their classes.

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OER can come from many different sources, but there are some great starting points for finding materials to use in your classes. Here is a list of some of the best databases, search engines, and other websites where you can search for resources in your field: 

• BCcampus - The BCcampus collection includes free textbooks across disciplines, as well as lots of resources on how to effectively use OER in class.
• Directory of Open Access Books - DOAB provides access to Open Access textbooks. You can search the collection or browse by title, subject, or publisher
• Mason OER Metafinder - George Mason University provides a metafinder that brings together results from 21 different OER providers. 
• Merlot - Merlot allows you to search for many different OER of various types, including assessments, presentations, and more. 
• OAPEN - OAPEN is an online library of freely available books. You can search for books, or browse them by subject, publisher, language, or collection. 
• OER Commons - OER Commons is one of the leading providers of OER, with options for finding existing OER as well as providing a platform for you to upload your own OER. Search existing resources by subject, education level, or education standard.
• OpenStax - Free textbooks published by Rice University and available to view online, download as PDF, or to order in print at a low cost. 
• Open Textbook Library - The Open Textbook Library includes over 700 textbooks, all free of charge.

Some unethical publishing companies use Open Access as a way to profit off of academic writing without actually caring about the quality of research. They do this by charging authors exorbitant fees and then putting the article on the web, but not editing or peer reviewing the content before publishing. This can lead to poor quality research being made available online. It’s important to avoid predatory publishing and be aware of these websites that masquerade as peer-reviewed but are not.

It’s important to be able to evaluate scholarly resources, especially Open Access resources, to tell if they have truly been through a rigorous research process. Here are a few online guides and websites with tips for evaluating research and avoiding predatory publishers:

• Evaluating Journal Articles Research Guide - Our guide on evaluating journal articles shows you how to use our library catalog search to find scholarly and peer reviewed articles. Some articles in our catalog are Open Access, while others are bought through a subscription. The guide also provides tips on determining if an article itself looks trustworthy. 
• Assessing Journal Quality: OA Journals Quality Indicators - The Boston College library has put together this helpful guide with some important indicators of predatory publishers compared to indicators of trustworthy academic publishers. 
• Open Access, Open Education, and More - This guide from Queensborough Community College provides a great overview of predatory publishing, as well as more resources for evaluating journals. 
• Beall’s List - Beall’s List is a list of known predatory publishers, as well as a list of predatory standalong journals. If you aren't sure if an article you found is reliable or not, try searching for the publisher or the journal on this website. 
• Stop Predatory Journals - This is a list of known predatory publishers, which you can use if you’ve found an article and you’re not sure if it is reliable or not. Finding the article’s journal on this list would confirm that it’s likely not a legitimate source.

Kopernio is a free browser extension from Web of Science that helps you find Open Access articles on the web. If you are looking at the record of an article that has a free PDF version available anywhere online, Kopernio will pop up as an icon in the bottom left corner of your screen. Clicking the icon will open a PDF version in your browser, where you can easily download, print, or get the citation for the article.

Kopernio also automatically saves any PDFs that you view to your Kopernio Locker, so you can always come back to articles that you have viewed in the past. Visit  https://kopernio.com/ for more information. 

Unpaywall is another free browser extension that finds Open Access versions of articles. Like Kopernio, it provides a pop up link to a PDF version. Unpaywall does not require an account, so it does not save your articles to view later. It provides similar easy access to Open Access versions of articles. Visit https://unpaywall.org/ for more information.