What is Open Access?
Open Access means the free and unrestricted online access to scientific literature. The idea is to make published research findings useable and available without any financial, legal or technical barriers to all people. This easy accessibility ensures a fast and sustainable dissemination.
Golden road
- First publication in Open Access journals, which make all their articles available in full-text and without delay.
- Open Access journals use the same strict quality control procedures (peer review) as conventional journals (Müller 2009).
- You can find an overview of Open Access journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Green road
- Parallel publication of an already published article on an institutional or professional document server (= repository).
- Many publishers allow such a secondary publication under certain conditions, for example a time delay (see SHERPA/RoMEO).
- An overview of Open Access repositories can be found in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) and in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).