Open Access (OA)

Portal to Open Access Journals, Books, Institutional Repositories, Publishers, useful links and much more.

WHAT IS OPEN ACCESS? HOW CAN  RESEARCHERS BENEFIT? WHY GET PUBLISHED IN OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL?

• Open Access Brochure (PDF) Facts and figures demonstrate how open access to scholarly research capitalizes on Internet connectivity to increase a research article’s use and impact. The brochure suggests steps authors of journal articles can take to provide open access to their work. This action can be at the local level in providing access to their own journal articles, and at a broader level to support open access publishers
• Authors & Open Access
• PLoS: Public Library of Science (Open Access License, why submit your research)
• SHERPA/RoMEO: Publisher’s Copyright Policies & Self-archiving; Publishers with Paid option for Open Access; Publishers Allowing use of their PDF’s in Repositories.
• Springer and Open Access
• What is Open Access (Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry – Open Access)
• Open Educational Resources (eIFL)
• The Effects of Open Access and downloads (“hits”) on Citation impact: a Bibliography of studies
• SCOAP: Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (Consortium Members)

OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVES

• eIFL.net: Open Access Week Initiative, 19-23 Oct 2009.
• What Librarians can do to promote Open Access
• What Faculty can Do to Promote Open Access
• Educational Materials for Open Access(wiki)
• Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association: 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing, 14-16 September 2009. Conference link; Conference program;
• Open Access Week Blog (19-23 October 2009)
• Open Access useful links
• Open access directory A compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large.
• Gray Area: Opening up scholarly publishing. Written by Eve Gray at the University of Cape Town, this blog discusses various issues related to scholarly publishing, including, amongst others, open access, journal licensing and intellectual property.
• Open Access News Blog Written by Nathan Georgette. Covers all aspects of open access.
• Copyright & A2K Issues A free online information service covering various topics, including copyright, plagiarism and other IP matters, Open Access.

Benefits of Open Access: BioMed Central’s authors and editors discuss the benefits of open access publishing

OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS

The Scientific Electronic Library Online – SciELO South Africa is an electronic library covering a selected collection of South African scientific journals.

Media publications about SciELO: Open Access to SA journals; Open Access first for South African Journal of Science(eIFL)

South African Journal of Science - Open Access Journal (NEW!)

• ArXiv.org (Open Access, both preprints and published papers are available: Physics; Astrophysics, Quantum Physics, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, etc.)
• Bentham Open Access Journals (Journals per Subject; Sciences, Health Sciences, Engineering)
• Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries. By providing a platform for the distribution of peer-reviewed journals (currently from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela), BI helps to reduce the global knowledge divide by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community world-wide. Journals List.
• Biology Browser: Thomson Reuters FREE database of Biology resources and web links
• BioMed Central (Open Access; Journals per Subject; Journals per Title; Biology Image Library)
• Chemistry Central (Open Access, Peer-review Chemistry Research; Journals Titles; RSS Feed for the latest articles)
• CERN Document Server (Over 900,000 bibliographic records, including 360,000 full text documents, of interest to people working in particle physics and related areas. Covers preprints, articles, books, journals, photographs, and much more)
• CoRR: Computing Research Repository (Open Access, Sponsored by ACM; First time user, click HERE!)
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Driver Search Portal (European Research)
• Free Electronic Mathematics Journals
• Golonka: E-Chemistry for Africa: The main purpose is to promote the use of Open Access journals and other scientific resources (e-books; e-journals, databases, links)
• Golonka: E-Math for Africa (Open Access resources)
• Golonka: E-Physics for Africa (Open Access resources)
• Highwire Press (Free online full-text articles)
• Hindawi Open Access Journals (Journals per Subject)
• OAIster (Search for digital items with this tool that provides 12 million resources from over 800 repositories)
• Open Access Central(BioMed Central; Chemistry Central; PhysMath Central)
• Open Access Journals: Links to over 30 Open Access Sciences Journals Portals.
• Open Access Journals: Bulgaria (Driver wiki, European research)( Applied Maths; Physics; Geological Society; Plant Physiology;etc. (18 journals)
• Open Access Journals & Institutional Repositories: South Africa (26 journals & 19 IR)
• Open Science Directory: A-to-Z Open Access Journals (incl. DOAJ, BioMed Central, PubMed Central, HighWire Press, HINARI, AGORA, OARE, eJDS. Read MORE…
• Open J-Gate (Over 5,000 Peer-Review Open access Journals)
• PhysMath Central (Open Access Physics & Mathematics Research)
• Public Library of Science(PLos)
• PubMed Central (Open Access; PubMed Journals)
• NSDL: Resources for Faculty and Students
• SciElo: Scientific Electronic Library Online
  
• South African Open Access Journals (Sabinet)
• Springer Images (Open Access Images/Articles)

OPEN ACCESS REPOSITORIES & THESES AND DISSERTATIONS

• Directory of Open Access Repositories (worldwide, incl. South Africa)
• IRSpace (Search South African & African  Research Repositories)

South African Open Access Institutional Repositories

• African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO): University of Western Cape. Includes research reports, journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, working papers, booklets, and policy documents
• Boloka: North-West University
• CSIR Research Space (Open and unrestricted access to the research outputs generated by CSIR scientists)
• Digital Knowledge: Cape Pennisula university of Technology
• DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology (Open Access Repository)
• Durban University of Technology Institutional Repository
• ResearchSpace@UKZN - University of KwaZulu-Natal
• Rhodes eResearch Repository
• Stellenbosch University Repository of E-Theses & Dissertations
• University of Cape Town Computer Science Research Document Archive
• University of Cape Town Lawspace
• University of Johannesburg UJ Digispace: UJ Open Institutional Repository (incl. Theses & Dissertations).
• University of Pretoria Institutional Repository (UPSpace)
• UnisaETD – University of South Africa
• UNISA Institutional Repositories
• University of the Free State (Online T & D)
• University of the Western Cape Electronic Theses & Dissertations
• University of Witwatersrand (Open Institutional Repository)
• University of Zululand Repository – University of Zululand

International Open Access Institutional Repositories

• ArXiv.org (E-prints, Open Access: Physics; Astrophysics, Quantum physics, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, etc.)
• ADT: Australasian Digital Theses Program
• Dissertations CIS (Russian Dissertations) Not Full-text. Search the Catalogue. If registered, you can view the first 25 pages. All Sciences and Engineering
• DiVA (Sweden Institutional Repositories from 24 Universities)
• Driver Search Portal (European Research) Open Access Full-text Scientific Publications. From 23 European countries.  200 Institutional or Thematic Repositories Journal articles, Dissertations, books, lectures, reports, etc
• EPrints: Open Access & Institutional Repositories
• HKUST: Institutional Repository (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Institutional Repository. Available also through “OAlster portal”)
• Narcis: Dutch Scientific information
• NDLTD: Network Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations (1991+; Search NDLTD for Theses and Dissertations. Open Access initiative. Full-text is also available)
• OAIster (Union Catalogue of Digital resources. Search for digital items with this tool that provides 12 million resources from over 800 repositories)
• Theses Canada Portal

OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHERS (AFRICA & SOUTH AFRICA)

• AJOL: African Journals OnLine (60 open access titles only)
• AOSIS
• Health and Medical Publications Group (HMPG)
• HSRC Press
• National Inquiry Services Centre (NISC)
• OIP: Open Access Publishing (Africa)
• SciELO (South Africa)

OPEN ACCESS BOOKS

• Science Dissemination Using Open Access (Free, Web 2.0)
• Scholarpedia: The Free Peer Reviewed Encyclopedia (AstroPhysics, Maths, Computing)

BOOKS TO READ ABOUT OPEN ACCESS

• Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science(Google Book, some parts are not full-text)

For help or any queries about Open Access, please contact me: pkovatcheva@uj.ac.za or leave a comment.