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Open Access

This guide provides basic information about using and producing open access scholarship for students and faculty.

Why Open Access?

Open access publishing comes with a variety of practical benefits for authors, creators, researchers, and the general public. 

  • Increased Impact – Research shows that OA articles often get more readers and citations than articles in subscription journals.  

  • Increased Funding Opportunities - Many funding agencies require scholarship to be published OA and made freely available to the public. 

  • Increased Accessibility – OA publishing makes information more widely available to diverse audiences, reducing barriers to participating in scholarly dialogue and helping to eliminate inequalities in access to knowledge.  

  • Increased Creativity & Knowledge Production – OA research findings can be disseminated more quickly, allowing for new scholarship to build off of these idea 

 

Open Access Research

The access principle : the case for open access to research and scholarship by John Willinsky 

Open-access, multimodality, and writing center studies by Elisabeth H. Buck 

 

The Benefits of Open Access Publishing

A diagram of the open access logo at the center of the page with arrows pointing toward the edges of the screen showing the benefits of open access including: more exposure for your work, practitioners can apply your findings, higher citation rates, your research can influence policy, the public can access your findings, compliant with grant rules, taxpayers get value for money, and researchers in developing countries can see your work.

 

Debunking OA Myths

Opposition to open access movements often relies on publishing myths. For more information, check out Boston College Libraries' research guide debunking common open access myths.