Open Access

The Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) exists to:

1. Provide an advocacy voice for open access to research in Australia and New Zealand.
2. Increase awareness of the importance of open access, and target advocacy to
   Australian and New Zealand research institutions, funders and the wider community.
3. Where appropriate to correspond with and advocate open access to publishers.
4. Share knowledge and experience and work collaboratively with groups in support of open access.
5. Be a voice to interact with other international organisations.

The latest blog posts from AOASG:

An international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. Developed by the Association of Research Libraries, SPARC has become a catalyst for change. Its pragmatic focus is to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research and reduce financial pressures on libraries.

Publications from SPARC:

What is RoMEO?
RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher policies on the self- archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.

What use is RoMEO to me?
If an academic author wants to put their research articles on-line, they are faced with an increasingly complex situation. Evidence shows that citations to articles made openly accessible in this way are taken up and cited more often than research that is simply published in journals. Also some funding agencies require open access archiving for their research, to increase the use of the information generated.

However, some publishers prohibit authors from using their own articles in this way. Others allow it, but only under certain conditions, while others are quite happy for authors to show their work in this way.

Authors can be left confused: RoMEO helps to clarify the situation.

What does RoMEO contain?
RoMEO contains publishers' general policies on self-archiving of journal and conference articles. Each entry provides a summary of the publisher's policy, including what version of an article can be deposited, where it can be deposited, and any conditions that are attached to that deposit.

What is Unpaywall?

Unpaywall is a service that maintains a database of links to full-text articles from open-access sources all over the world. They provide access to their database so researchers and members of the public can access this open content, rather than paying to access that same content when it is held behind paywalls.

What use is Unpaywall to me?

Unpaywall provides access to their database through various search tools, and through a browser extension. The browser extension works in the background, automatically searching for and flagging open access articles while you browse. When you browse to a page containing a paywalled publication, the browser extension searches to see if there is an open access copy in the Unpaywall database. If there is, it will place a green padlock button on the side of your screen. Just click on it to read the open access version of the publication. The browser extension is currently available for Google Chrome and Firefox browsers.

What does Unpaywall contain?

The content in Unpaywall is harvested from sources including repositories run by universities, governments, and scholarly societies, all of which legally contain this open research content. They also harvest open content hosted by publishers themselves. Unpaywall focuses on providing greater access to the following types of open content:

• Author-Archived Open Access content (“green OA”): OA versions of publications – generally manuscript versions – that authors have posted in repositories (the final published versions appear in paid-access journals).
• Hybrid OA content: individual articles which are available OA directly from the publisher, in a journal which is otherwise available only by paid subscription.
• Full OA journal content: articles which are published in full OA journals and indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or other sources.

The Open Access Button will search the web for a version of the paper that you can access immediately and without payment. If that doesn't work, the Button will email the author and look for more information about the paper.

The Open Access Net platform aims to meet the growing demand for information on the subject of Open Access. The editorial team gathers information which is scattered across many sources and bundles it thematically for presentation to various target groups.

OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories.

DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system, and is not  limited to particular languages or subject areas.

OATD distinguishes itself by providing access to more than 1.6 million open-access theses and dissertations freely available from over 800 institutions worldwide. 

PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.