Abstract
The emergence of open access is one of the most significant changes to the world of scholarly publications since the migration from print to digital publishing began. Reports of some authors have demonstrated how libraries across the membership are changing, in response to a need for new services and an increasingly diverse client group. In order to contribute to the existing knowledge in the area of open access movement in libraries, this chapter discusses how the 21st century library provides a service that can open access to knowledge for the growth and development of communities they serve by highlighting the concept of open access and open content, roles of libraries in open access initiative as well as library collection development and open access. This chapter also sheds light on legal and ethical issues in open access and the future of open access in libraries.
TopThe Concepts Of Open Access And Open Content
A large number of competing definitions of the term open access exist. The definition of open access has been put forth by many authors such as Peter Suber (2004) who defined the term as literature, which is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Open access is a way to provide free online journal articles to readers while supporting operations through financial models that permit this free electronic distribution. Because this is usually a paperless model (although hybrids exist), the turnaround is often much faster and cheaper than traditional publishing. However, some resources and funds are required for technical support as well as administrative costs, albeit less than those for a traditional print journal. Without these supports, an OA journal would not be able to support their website, peer and editorial reviews, sustainability, and growth (Daught, 2012, Williams-Jones et al., 2014).
OA business models are varied but usually available in two potential varieties: with a front-end fee or article-processing charge (APC) or no charge to authors. The APC model requires that once the article has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, the publisher's costs are paid by the authors or authors’ research funder or institution. With the no charge to the authors model, the publishers fund their operations through sponsorship, advertising, voluntary labor, and/or by selling subscriptions for the printed form of the journal (Daught, 2012).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Open Collection: The term applies to copyrightable content that is made freely available and licensed according to permission for what are known as the 5R activities: retain, reuse, revise, remix, and re-distribute.
Open Content: Open content is material, such as documents, images, and audio or video presentations that may be freely and legally reproduced, edited, excerpted, expanded, and republished.
Open Access: Open access (OA) is a mechanism by which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other barriers, and, in its most precise meaning, with the addition of an open license applied to promote reuse.
New Opportunities: This is simple referred to as new potentials provided by open access to library uses.