Open Access in scholarly communication

Open Access (OA) has come along way since the idea was formalised in 2002 as the Budapest Open Access Initiative.  It has since become the catch call for scholarly communication, providing an ideal tool in the dissemination of research results and publications far and wide.

Since it's inception, there are many models of implementing OA - gold, hybrid, delayed and green.  Green OA is the preferred, at least from this Repository Manager's point of view, however I fully appreciate that some researchers do not want a less than perfect version of their work out on display to the world.  This is where the Gold/Hybrid/Delayed route comes into play - still all very legitimate OA options.

No matter which OA method is chosen, the most important thing is that research results are made available to anyone that is interested, regardless of access to subscription library databases, and that universities and other research institutions recognise the importance in providing the infrastructure and the means to make this research accessible.

(Based on the article by Mohammad Reza Ghane (2014) Open Access Policy. International Journal of Information Science and Management)