Open Access
Open Access is free, online availability of scholarly publications, including peer-reviewed materials. An increasing number of research funders including Canada’s Tri-Agencies require that publications from funded research be made Open Access.
Publishing in Open Access Journals
One way to make your scholarly publications Open Access is to publish in Open Access journals that make articles available online to everyone for free. In the traditional publishing model, readers pay a journal a subscription fee to view articles in the journal. In the university setting, it is usually the university’s library that pays journal subscription fees. In the Open Access publishing model, authors pay a journal an article processing charge or Open Access fee, and the journal in turn makes its articles viewable to everyone for free. In either publishing model, there is a cost to running a journal. Through the University of Manitoba Libraries, you can get discounts on Open Access fees of certain publishers.
Self-Archiving
Another way to make your scholarly publications Open Access is to deposit copies of your previously published articles in an Open Access repository. This way is referred as self-archiving. If you have published an article in a subscription-based journal, you may make the article Open Access by self-archiving. Anyone can search, view, and download items deposited in an Open Access repository. Some repositories accept publications from specific subject areas such as PubMed Central for the health sciences and arXiv for physics, astronomy, and mathematics. This type of repository is called a domain repository. Other repositories accept publications from authors affiliated with a certain institution. This type of repository is called an institutional repository. The University of Manitoba Libraries has a repository called MSpace. If you are a student, faculty, or staff at the University of Manitoba, you can deposit your publications in MSpace for free.
Publishers’ Self-Archiving and Copyright Policies
If you are self-archiving a copy of your previously published article, please check the original publisher’s self-archiving and copyright policies. These policies tell you the conditions for self-archiving, and you are responsible as an author to make sure you are not infringing on these policies. Librarians can help you comply with publishers’ self-archiving and copyright policies.
For more information about Open Access, please contact the University of Manitoba Libraries.
