Open access (OA) is a set of principles related to the distribution of research. Open access publications are ones that are freely available online without barriers to access and can be read, cited, and used by others. 

Proponents of open access list a number of potential benefits to greater availability of open access research including:

• Breakthroughs on certain topics potentially happening faster (particularly related to time-sensitive topics like COVID-19 vaccination development)
• Economic growth 
• More equitable access to research- access not tied to the institution's library budget or someone being at an institution with a library budget
• Potential for greater impact and reach of research 
• Opening up possibilities to shift academic publishing economic models as a whole

The two primary models of open access are Gold OA and Green OA

Gold OA	Green OA
Research is published in an Open Access (or hybrid) Journal or through an Open Access Book Publisher. The Publication is available openly immediately The author, or the funder of their research may need to pay a fee for publication	Research is traditionally published, but with a stipulation in the contract that allows the author rights to reproduce and share their work. Then the author self-archives in an institutional or national archive. Depending on the contract, publication may be able to be made 'open' immediately or after an embargo period. Often no fees to researchers.

Image by Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brow from Rhodes University Library

W&L options for publishing OA

The University Library participates in several open access initiatives through our consortial network, VIVA.

• ACS [American Chemical Society] Read and Publish Agreement
• ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] Open Access Agreement 
• Cambridge University Press Transformative Agreement  
  • Interested authors can review Cambridge's Convert Your Article to Open Access webpage and Author Workflow Slides 
• IOP [Institute of Physics] Transformative Agreement — more IOP information and author workflow 
• IWA [International Water Association] Publishing Transformative Agreement 
• PLOS [Public Library of Science] Institutional Partnership
• Springer Nature Transformative Agreement

We also are supporting members of Lever Press, a scholarly press that publishes peer-reviewed, born digital, open access monographs. Learn more about publishing with Lever Press. Lever was created by a consortium of small liberal arts colleges, including Washington & Lee, and partners with the University of Michigan Press for administration and operations. 

Guidelines and tools to support green OA

• SPARC Author Addendum

• MIT Framework for Publisher Contracts

  MIT has developed a framework for supporting authors as they negotiate with publishers.

• Share Your Paper

  Search your past papers by DOI to see if you can share it openly now.

• Search on the rights of journals and publishers

  Want to know if you can add your work to the institutional repository? Search here to learn more about the rights you reserve when publishing in different journals or book series.

Guidelines and tools to support gold OA

The Directory of Open Access Journals is a resource for author's seeking to publish in an Open Access journal.  It is also widely used to evaluate the legitimacy of a potential publishing venue.

if you are an editor of a journal, ideas for transitioning a journal to Open Access.

Tips from Harvard on making your work open.

Sections of this guide were taken from or inspired by Bucknell University's Collection Development Sustainability Task Force Guide, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.