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Open Access FAQ

Open access and alternative models for publication

What is “Open Access?”

Open access refers to providing information or documents “freely to the public via the internet.” Normally it also means permitting anyone to “...read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of...articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.” (Budapest Open Access Initiative)

How is open access to research publications typically achieved?

  • Open Access Journals. Authors can publish their work in one of more than 5400 journals worldwide that make their articles freely available via the internet. Open access journals often finance themselves using a variety of alternative funding models, including author publishing fees or page charges.
  • Author Self-archiving. Authors can also place article “pre-prints” (versions of articles before peer review) or “post-prints” (the revised versions following peer review) in a subject-based repository like PubMed Central for biomedical and life sciences literature, ArXiv for Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics, or an “institutional” repository like those in place at many research universities.  An institutional repository is a system for preserving and making accessible scholarly work created at an academic institution or in conjunction with other institutions.

What are some open access pros and cons?

  • Open access to journal articles and other publications makes research results available to researchers, students and taxpayers who don’t have and may not be able to afford access to the journals they appear in – which can be quite expensive.
  • Some journal publishers and scholarly societies argue that open access will undermine their financial health and have other negative consequences.
  • Articles made available on an open access basis may be cited more and be more influential than those that have not. (See a summary of such citation studies.)

Does the UW have an open access policy?

The University has taken no formal position on open access, but in April 2009 the UW Faculty Senate approved a resolution encouraging faculty to publish in “moderately priced journals, in journals published by professional societies and associations, or in peer-reviewed ‘open access’ journals,” and to archive their work in open access repositories.

The UW’s Office of Research also issued a statement of UW position in 2007 encouraging voluntary open access.

Does UW have an Institutional Repository?

Yes. The UW Libraries’ repository is called ResearchWorks at the University of Washington. The ResearchWorks service is segmented into three parts – the Archive, Journal Hosting, and Media Publishing.

As a UW researcher, can I add copies of my publications to the ResearchWorks Archive?

Absolutely, and in fact we encourage you to do so.  Read more information about the Archive and five great reasons to use the service.

What if I’m looking to start a new journal or help re-locate an existing title – could I take advantage of ResearchWorks Journal Hosting?

Definitely – that’s why we’re supporting the service.  See a description of the journal hosting service for more information.

As a graduate student, can I make my thesis or dissertation available on an open access basis through ResearchWorks?

Yes, and the service is free of charge. (Specifically, you do not have to pay UW anything extra or accept the Proquest open access publishing option and pay a $95 fee.) To take advantage of this free service, once your thesis or dissertation is complete and approved, contact rworks@uw.edu and include the name of the department conferring the degree, and someone from the Libraries will contact you about next steps. The Graduate School and the Libraries are also working toward a full-fledged Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) program through which all dissertations will be deposited in ResearchWorks in the future.

What else should I know or think about when considering making my thesis or dissertation available on an open access basis?

  • Open access and author copyright. As the author of your thesis or dissertation, you own the copyright, and making your thesis or dissertation available on an open access basis in ResearchWorks will not change that.
  • Open access as prior publication. If you expect to publish a revised version of your thesis or dissertation as a book (relatively few are ever published as books, but you might plan to publish materials produced as part of a Creative Writing program, for example), or re-use parts of it for a journal article, you may wish to check with likely publishers, and if necessary delay the public release of your thesis or dissertation.
  • Other “good practices” that may be more important when your work is more visible:
    • Copyrighted materials. Some theses and dissertations contain copyrighted material, such as journal articles that the author may have published or co-published as part of his/her graduate work, or a copy of a standardized test. Authors should make sure they have the right to reproduce any such content before making it freely available.
    • Patents. Occasionally a thesis or dissertation contains or refers to work that the author, their Department or the UW may wish to protect via one or more patents, and consequently "embargo" or delay its release for a certain period of time, such as a year or two.

For Further Reading: