Open Access

Citation

Chawner, B. (2013), "Open Access", Online Information Review, Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 150-151. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521311311711

Anyone who has been following the open access (OA) movement will be familiar with Peter Suber's name. Suber has been writing about OA concepts and developments since 2001, making him one of the movement's most important champions. Now, in Open Access Suber provides a succinct, readable and well‐reasoned discussion of OA concepts and practices.

The book begins with a discussion of what OA is and is not, followed by an explanation of the motivation behind the move to OA for academic publishing. The next chapter outlines options for delivering OA content, including wikis, blogs, journals and repositories. One key enabler of OA publishing in an academic context is the presence of a policy encouraging or requiring researchers to publish their results as OA. Suber discusses two types of policies: those implemented by funding institutions such as the Wellcome Trust in the UK and the National Institutes of Health in the USA, and policies adopted by universities or individual university faculties.

The next chapters deal with more specific aspects of OA publishing. Suber notes that OA is not restricted to journal articles, identifying many different types of material that can be published under an OA licence, including books, theses and dissertations, data, images and teaching material. He covers the relationship between copyright and OA clearly, emphasising that OA publishing complies with copyright requirements whenever the copyright holder authorises OA. This is followed by a chapter discussing the economics of OA publishing, noting that there are many funding models and that the belief that all OA journals charge author fees is false. The chapter on “casualties” considers how a widespread shift to OA might affect publishers of traditional toll‐access journals, whilst the chapter on the future suggests that resistance to OA is diminishing as more people understand what it involves. The final chapter presents practical advice for researchers interested in making their work available as OA. There is a short glossary of key terms, extensive notes for each chapter, a list of further resources and a subject index.

Overall this book is an excellent guide for anyone interested in learning more about open access publishing. My only quibble relates to whether the book is itself OA. The preface states that “This book will itself be OA twelve months after it appears in print”, whilst the title page verso includes a CC‐BY logo above a standard “all rights reserved” copyright statement. These appear to be contradictory statements. Suber clarifies this on the book's web page (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book)), noting that some material was previously published under a CC‐BY licence. Subsequent printings of the book will clarify this, and the book itself will be available under a CC‐BY‐NC license on 15 June 2013.