There are many definitions for open access but basically the idea of open access is that scientific publications should be online available for everyone without the need to pay an access fee.
Benefits
- Open Access increases the visibility of research output
- Open Access support innovation and knowledge economy.
- Helps to close the knowledge gap between the Global North and Global South
Open access publication models
green open access
Under this model a researchers makes his work open access available by self-archiving the last submitted peer-reviewed manuscript in an institutional repository. Self-archived manuscripts are often made accessible after an embargo period.
Since 2018 this model is supported by the Belgian Open Acccess regulation (Art. XI.196, §2/1 Wetboek Economisch recht). The Belgian open access regulation gives authors the right to make the manuscript of a scholarly article available in open access if the publication is a result of research funded by public funds for at least 50%, with a maximum embargo period of 12 months for the social sciences and humanities and 6 months for the other sciences.
gold open access
Here the author pays the publisher a fee (author processing charge or APC) to make the final version of the work immediately open access available on the publisher's platform. Very often these publications are made available under one of the creative commons licenses. In this model users don't need a subscription to a journal or have to pay an access fee.
Open access policy
The open access policy entails the obligation that all UAntwerp authors have to add the pdf of the final author version* or an open access publisher version when they register a peer reviewed journal article for inclusion in the academic bibliography.
Submitted final author’s versions of journal articles will be made open access available according to the publisher copyright policy and/or the Belgian Open Access regulation.**
* The term ‘final author’s version’ means the last submitted peer-reviewed manuscript. Also referred to as ‘author accepted manuscript (AAM) or post-print.