Open Access = a method of communication between scientists, an alternative option to the traditional dissemination of scientific knowledge through scientific journals. It aims to provide unlimited online access to scientific information, which ensures auto-archiving of articles in open repositories or publishing in open journals. 

The Benefits of Open Access: 

• Faster exchange of information 
• Promoting authors and their institutions 
• A better distribution of publication outputs
• Increase in the citation rates

Open Access and the TBU Library:

The TBU Library supports open access to published results of science and research. 

• We enable our users to provide access for authors to publications in Open Access mode in the institutional repository, 
• We check the publishing policy of particular publishers, 
• We provide access to a large collection of Open Access journals, 
• We simplify the search for scientific articles in Open Access journals and make it more effective,
• We promote edification of the issue of Open Access...

Open Access in the 7th Framework Programme:

Currently, the European Commission pursues two open access policies. The aim of both policies is to ensure that the results of research funded by the EU citizens are freely available to the wider public. Open Access may thus be an effective way to increase the rate of return of the European investment to research and development.

In December 2007 the Scientific Board of the European Research Council (ERC) published its Guidelines for Open Access following its Statement on Open Access issued in 2006.  In August 2008 the European Commission launched the Open Access Pilot Project in the 7th Framework Programme, which will run until the termination of the Framework Programme.

These initiatives require the scientist to provide open access to articles, which are results of research funded by the EC within the scheduled period of time. Furthermore, both initiatives lay down other requirements; please refer to ERC Scientific Council Guidelines for Open Access and the Open Access Pilot Project in the 7^th Framework Programme. 

You can find detailed information (who is supposed to deposit what, where and when) on the website of the OpenAIRE project, or you can contact the Library staff (budinsky@kutbcz).

Basic scheme of scientific communication:

Authors want to publish the results of their scientific activities preferably in prestigious reviewed journals. From the moment the first version of the article is accepted, it usually takes many months for the final version of the article to be published, which makes the process of scientific communication very slow. Prestigious journals are usually available by virtue of paid licence. A number of scientists may not have access to them at all, which may consequently have a negative impact on the overall scientific progress.

By contrast, Open Access is able to speed up scientific communication and ensure free access to scientific publications for everyone.

Open Access Models - Golden Way:

Publishing of articles in freely available journals: Many thousands of titles of electronic journals are published on the Open Access basis. The DOAJ register offers a list of electronic journals and facilitates search at the level of particular articles.

Prestigious publishing houses and Open Access:  25,000 reviewed scientific journals are published worldwide, with the most part of them being subject to the payment of a fee, which means that an average scientific institution has access only to a part of them. Only 5% of indexed journals are freely available, even though their number increases every year.

How to succeed in publishing an article in a prestigious journal and at the same time make it freely available? Large publishers offer the so-called hybrid model journals, i.e. articles in the particular journal standardly subject to the payment of a fee, however, at the request of the author his/her article in the journal can be made freely available. Nevertheless, the author must pay the fee for publishing his/her article - usually approx. USD 3,000. It is very demanding to spend such a large amount of money. Therefore, e.g. there is the Sherpa Juliet, which offers a list of collections, foundations and institutions that can help the scientists cover the costs related to publication activities.

Open Access Models - Green Way:

Depositing publications in open archives: The author himself/herself shall deposit the pre-print or post-print of his her article in some of the open archives. Thus, the mentioned time delay related to the publishing of articles in scientific journals is often eliminated.

Archiving of articles is supported by the publishers. Authors’ rights may be checked by means of Sherpa Romeo database. 63% of publishers support some of the ways of depositing articles in open repositories. Such publishers include the most prestigious ones (e.g. Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Sage, Taylor and Francis, etc.).

Open Archives:

• Digital depository with free access for all users.
• Subject – global field of action
• Institutional – self-archiving carried out within an institution

Thanks to these conditions central services and collective catalogues such as, for example: OAIster, Roar, OpenDoar are formed.

This means that depositing an article in an open archive ensures worldwide access to it.

Related information resources:

• Miroslav Bartošek. Open Access to Scientific Information
• Blog of the Central Library of VŠB-TUO about Open Access

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Staff in charge:

Ing. Lukáš Budínský head of IT department E-mail: budinsky@kutbcz Tel.: +420 57 603 4919