Research, Publishing and PBRF

Definition of Open Access

Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

OA is a way of getting research to as many people as possible without the restrictions of traditional publishing eg. subscription only access, and the lengthy timeframes.

Levels of Open Access

OA is scalable, here is a pamphlet that sets out the degrees of OA, made available via CC from University of Iowa's guide

• Total Open Access journals Peer-reviewed journals that do not charge readers subscription fees. These journals typically charge authors an "open access publication fee", some OA journals do not charge authors
• Hybrid Open Access journals Increasingly peer-reviewed journals that charge readers a subscription fee are offering authors the option to make individual articles OA through an additional author fee, this allows readers without a subscription to have access to the article.
• Self-archiving, sharing, or DIY Open Access Authors who publish articles often want to share and post their work for others to read. Authors do this through institutional repositories, personal websites, or in online communities. Self-archiving must be done with careful consideration of author agreements and copyright set in place by the journal that originally published the article.

This video was created by Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics)

What is an institutional repository? 

Institutional repositories are digital collections of the research output of an institution. This output can come in many formats including journal articles, theses, presentations from conferences and audiovisual recordings. 
 
Unitec’s Research Bank 

Unitec’s repository is Research Bank. Administered by the Unitec Library, Research Bank is currently a platform for the research output of Unitec, Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), Otago Polytechnic, Toi-Ohomai and Southern Institute of Technology (SIT). 
 
Research Bank is also accessible from the Library Home page (under “Key Resources”) 
 
Other repositories 
You can find a comprehensive selection of NZ research output at nzresearch.org.nz.