An Introduction to Open Access

Open access is free, immediate, online access to research. It is usually free of copyright restrictions, allowing sharing and reuse, meaning research can have wider impact with greater speed and efficiency.

Each year, Open Access Week promotes the benefits of open access on societal and economic fronts, and gives practitioners an opportunity to share their experiences and inspire wider participation in the movement. From 19-25 October, we are running a series of blogposts that will introduce you to some of the open research activities taking place at the University of Wolverhampton, written by the researchers who undertook them, and to resources that will help you take advantage of the increasing amount of open access research that is available.

The University is committed to open research, of which open access to research publications is one aspect. Open research refers to the idea that all knowledge is made available and open as soon as possible in the research lifecycle, and is collaborative, transparent, reproducible, and publicly available. The Statement on Open Research and Open Access policy show in more detail how the university encourages engagement, and through the week we will be showcasing how researchers are engaging with these issues of planning, analysing, reviewing and publishing open research.

To provide open access to research outputs, researchers can take various publication routes. Researchers submit journal articles, book chapters, research reports, theses and other publications to our institutional repository, WIRE, where the Scholarly Communications Team in the library make these available to view and re-use via green open access. The university takes part in read and publish deals that support gold open access publication of articles, and more details of the deals available will be provided during the week. The university also uses tools that allow people to more easily discover open access resources, and we will highlight some browser extensions that will help you find open access articles.

More information on Open Access is available at wlv.ac.uk/lib/research/open-access, and information on submitting material to WIRE at wlv.ac.uk/lib/research/wire.

If you have any queries regarding open access at the University of Wolverhampton, contact the Scholarly Communications Team via WIRE@wlv.ac.uk.