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Open Access Publishing

Open access (OA) as defined by the Bethesda Statement is a publication model based on free and unrestricted access to scholarly research output that is archived in at least one online repository supported by an academic, scholarly, or government agency.

The traditional model of scholarly publication relies on publishers to facilitate the process of selection, peer review, editing, and dissemination. Libraries, in turn, purchase and provide access to these published books and journals. OA is an alternative publishing model that retains the selection, peer review, editing and dissemination, but makes the published work available for free to all users from the point of publication. The costs of publishing are borne not by the readers but by the authors themselves, government grants, universities, and other agencies.

Open access publishing in the past was relegated to a few specialty publishers and only certain open access journals that may not have been top tier.  Now, open access is mainstream and is an option for most journals (including top tier) in the sciences and a growing number in other fields.  

Note that "open access" in this case refers to publishing scholarly output See these other library web pages for MSU support of publishing open textbooks and other open educational resources.

Why might one want to publish open access?

  • Visibility and Impact: Open access allows anyone in the community to read and engage with academic work, even if they are not at an academic institution with a subscription. This means your published work will have more visibility worldwide and potential to impact policy and practice in many fields, such as government, public policy, health care, agriculture, education, engineering, psychology, and the arts.  
  • Authors retain copyright: Rather than signing away copyright or signing away almost all publishing and use rights, you can keep copyright when you publish open access, allowing you to use your own work however you like.   
  • Less restrictions on use by others: Open access publications often use Creative Commons licenses that allow your materials to be used, shared, and remixed without paying extra fees. Authors can choose the license that they prefer--please see this page for suggestions.  
  • Citation Rate: Some studies have shown that open access publications tend to receive more citations than subscription-based publications.  There will be more data on this once more articles become open access.  
  • Compliance with research funder policies: Many funding agencies require public access to research publications resulting from their grants. In the United States, National Institutes of Health funded projects have had a public access policy for many years (see: NIH Public Access Policy). A 2022 memo from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy mandates that all federal funding agencies develop a plan by mid 2023 for published results of research to be posted in a publicly accessible repository with no embargo period. The plans should be fully implemented by 2025. See interview with Dr. Alondra Nelson.

Why might one not want to publish open access?

  • A very few high impact, quality journals and monograph publishers still do not allow open access publishing.
  • Many of the fees to publish open access are very high, although this pertains more to gold open access. Green open access does not cost anything (see below).

Open Access Journal Article Publishing

Open access journal article publishing has become fairly common. There are two main OA publishing options, green and gold. See Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Gold: Publish in open access journals or in hybrid journals with an open access option

OA journals or hybrid journals with an open access option provide a venue to publish your work that facilitates free and unfettered access immediately. There are multiple types of journals that allow open access:

Green: Self-archive and make available open access copies of your work

This is a no-cost option and is the option mandated by U.S. federal funders. Authors may post a pre- or post-print copy of an article or book chapter in an institutional repository or individual web site. Check SHERPA RoMEO to see what is allowed for different journals. You will also need to pay attention to your author agreement with the publisher of your work to stay in alignment with new federal policies for archiving.

What repositories are available to me for self-archiving?

Open Access Monograph Publishing

Open access monograph publishing is a growing trend as publishers experiment with models that might work for funding it. There are more complications than for journal publishing as there is often more publisher involvement in monographic publishing than in journal publishing and each monograph is very costly to produce. See Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).