Posted 7:40 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009
You're researching a topic in Google Scholar. You find a great article, click on the link, and end up on a publisher's web site asking for $25 before you can view the article. While your first course of action should be to check local holdings through the Murphy Library web site and explore the fabulous interlibrary loan/document delivery service we have at UW-L, wouldn't it just be easier to get access to the article wherever you find it for free? The open access movement aims to unlock scientific and scholarly research, making it freely available to all immediately after publication.
You may not have realized that this week marks the first International Open Access Week. Open Access Week celebrates the progress of institutions and individuals working together to unlock barriers to scholarly and scientific research. Murphy's librarians will be communicating more about scholarly communication issues and how open access can benefit us all later in the year, but this week is an excellent time to get better versed in all things open access. Here are some links to learn more about open access:
Open Access 101 - from SPARC (video)
Top 5 Open Access Myths (University of Minnesota)
Check out the thousands of open access, scholarly journals already available (DOAJ)
Explore the Public Library of Science (PLOS), a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.