It is time for Open Access week again. Last year we had an exhibition about what journals really cost for libraries. It was shown that the four most expensive journals cost us more than 1 500 SEK/number. We also explained a number of important concepts in connection with Open Access.
Open Access week is a global annual event, which is held for the fourth time. The main purpose of the week is to raise awareness in the academic community and among others about the benefits of Open Access in scientific communication. In short, Open Access can be defined as online access to research literature, free of charge and free of copyright and other licensing limitations. Open Access has the potential to change how research is done and spread. With Open Access research is spread quicker and some studies even indicate that when research is freely available it receives more citations, which in turn indicates that the research has reached more people. In time this might mean that there are more researchers that can build on your research and vice versa. You might realize that there is no need to conduct a particular study and this allows you to concentrate on something that is more interesting to you. There are even more benefits to Open Access and during the coming week we will publish more about Open Access in this blog. Before that you can visit the official site of Open Access week.
First published in Biblioteksbloggen 2011-10-21
By: Pieta Eklund