Belk Library and Information Commons

Scholars can reap tremendous benefits from sharing their work with a wider audience. In the past fifteen years, study after study has shown that when scholarship is available freely on the web, it has a far greater impact than work that is controlled behind publisher barriers.

The open access movement has renovated the landscape of the Internet. Researchers in every country around the world can search journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals, use institutional repositories to find pre- and post-prints of peer-reviewed articles, and access scholarship through several disciplinary portals. Increasing access and experimenting with new publishing models make a significant impact on scholarship and promote faster developments in research throughout the world.

Among the factors hastening our need to rethink publishing models:

• increased reliance on reproduced materials for courses and study;
• the continued development of the free Web as a prime source for research;
• the integration of digital technologies into teaching and research;
• the growth of Web-based data and publications; and
• globalization and the intense need to do collaborative work with colleagues around the world.

The new practices of researchers, scholars, and students are driving many of the changes in the scholarly communication and publishing landscape.

Open-access journals, whose costs are covered through publication fees, sponsorships, in-kind contributions, or other sources of support, are emerging as an alternative to the traditional subscription model. More than 3,900 open-access journals in wide-ranging fields are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Open access does not mean giving up peer review. Open-access and economically priced journals recognize and preserve the important role of peer review in scholarly communication.

For More Information

• New Modes—from the Create Change website

• OAIster searches more than 12 million records in over 800 repositories

• Scientific Commons includes more than 16 million publications from over 6 million authors in over 800 repositories.

• PubMed Central is the world's largest open access archive

Please contact Allan Scherlen at scherlen@appstate.edu for more information.