OKAYAMA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

MENU

Support for Open Access

What is Open Access?

“Open Access (OA)” means making academic information freely available on the public internet. Open Access promotes to allow others to re-use that research.

Over the last few decades, subscription costs in scientific publishing have soared and publishers have played a dominant role in the publication and spreading of academic information. Because many articles are locked behind a paywall, some academic institutions stop paying and drop out subscription on account of the financial difficulties. In order to solve these problems, Okayama University Libraries recommend and support Open Access.

How to make your articles open access

There are two ways to make your articles open access:

(1) Green Open Access: self-archiving

This is a way to self-archive your scientific achievement in an institutional repository.
Okayama University affairs can deposit their articles in Okayama University Scientific Achievement Repository (OUSAR).

About OUSAR: Okayama University Scientific Achievement Repository (OUSAR)

Articles supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research are, as a principle, required to be open access.

(2) Gold Open Access: Open access publishing

This is a way to make your articles open access immediately after the publication. In this option, authors or their funder bear the cost of APC (Article Processing Charge). Okayama University affairs may get to a waiver or discount the APC of the journals. Before you submit your manuscript, please check the information below.

APC waivers and discounts for Open Access

Caution: Be aware of "predatory journals"

Some open access journals, called "predatory journals", are published only to aim stealing APC from authors or their funders.

Be aware of Predatory Journals

Background on Open Access

In late 1990s, a movement started to call reforming the subscription-based publication model in academia. In 1998, Association of Research Libraries organized SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). Also, in 2002, Budapest Open Access Initiative proposed a declaration to achieve open access. In it, they define Open Access below:

By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these 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. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
("Read the Declaration":
THE BUDAPEST OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVE https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/)

Now, in Japan, "SPARC / JAPAN" is organized by National Institute of Informatics.
Also, JPCOAR is established with the aim of promoting the construction of a repository-based knowledge dissemination system, strengthening the repository community, and contributing to open access and open science in Japan.