October 12, 2022
As researchers, we all know the frustration of attempting to access a journal article only to find that it’s locked behind a paywall. International Open Access Week, October 24-30, 2022, is an annual recognition of the global effort to transform scholarly publishing and ensure that research articles are accessible to everyone—regardless of their ability to pay the high fees often required for scholarly journal access.
“Open for Climate Justice” is the theme for this year’s International Open Access Week. This year’s focus on Climate Justice seeks to encourage connection and collaboration among the climate movement and the international open community. Sharing knowledge is a human right, and tackling the climate crisis requires the rapid exchange of knowledge across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries.
For more information about International Open Access Week, please visit openaccessweek.org. The official twitter hashtag for the week is #OAWeek.
At NDSU Libraries, we support open access in a variety of ways:
- The NDSU Repository holds theses and dissertations, Extension publications, university records and archives, and much more.
- The NDSU Repository also provides NDSU researchers with an opportunity to deposit a version of their accepted, published articles in a space where they can be accessed by anyone, free of cost. Most publishers allow for some version of accepted articles to be shared in a university-affiliated repository. To learn more, contact your subject librarian.
- We support education and awareness of author’s rights, providing an open access resource guide and workshops each semester as part of the Graduate Researcher Series.
- We partner with publishers who offer discounts or no cost to NDSU authors to make their research articles open access. Click here to learn more about the Institutional Open Access Program with the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, and here to learn more about SCOAP3, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics.
- We provide information and assistance to encourage the continued adoption of Open Access publishing, and work to support Student Government initiatives around Open Educational Resources at NDSU.
Check out the following resources to take advantage of the opportunities open access provides:
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
- Unpaywall is an extension for the Chrome browser that will easily connect you to open versions of paywalled articles, if available.
- The Open Access Button is a web-based search tool for locating open versions of published articles. A browser extension is also available.
- The Open Research Library is an online portal that is eventually planned to include all open access book/monograph content worldwide.
- Discover disciplinary repositories available for your subject.
- Learn about SPARC’s author addendum and how it can protect your rights to your research output.
- Read the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s memorandum Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research and the summary from the OSTP Blog.
For more resources and to learn more about open access, visit SPARC.