Original content on this guide is licensed with a Creative Commons Attibution License. Content drawn from other sources has different reuse options and this is noted where possible.
History of the Open Access Movement:
This list is based heavily on a guide prepared by the ACRL Scholarly Communications Toolkit Editing Team under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA) license.
Open Access refers to publications that are free to anyone with an internet connection. This includes the rights to view, read, download and build upon the work being read. There are variations in open access publishing, however. For example, the work may be made freely available to find and read, but not to re-use. The most common types of open access include journals that provide access to readers (no subscriptions) but which receive sponsorship or support through charges to authors instead. Repositories, often institutionally or disciplinary based, provide a space for scholars to deposit their research articles in an online, central database freely accessible to anyone.
Article Processing Charges (APCs): APCs are paid by authors (often through grant funding). They are used by open access journals in lieu of subscription fees to support the cost of publishing and may generate revenue for the publisher.
Diamond Open Access: Journals receive financial support from institutions or other sponsors and do not charge a fee to readers or authors. Also referred to as Platinum Open Access.
Embargo: A period of time set by the publisher in which an academic article cannot be deposited into an institutional or other open access repository.
Green Open Access: An author publishes their article in a pay-to-access journal, and then is able to self-archive a version of their work in an open access repository or author website.
Gold Open Access: An author publishes their article in an open access journal, where anyone can access all the articles in the journal for free.
Hybrid Open Access: A journal or publisher that is primarily pay-to-access, but offers authors the option to pay to publish their individual articles as open access.
Predatory Publishers: Predatory publishing is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.
Publisher Policy: Publishing companies often have policies related to where and when authors can share versions of their articles.
Paywall: A paywall is a virtual "wall" behind which journal articles exist that someone must pay a fee to access. For researchers affiliated with an academic or research institution, this fee is often paid for by the institution in a subscription-based model.
Pre-Print: A draft of an academic article as submitted for peer review.
Post-Print: The final draft of an academic article after peer review but before copy-editing.
Publisher Version/PDF: The version of an academic article that is formatted for publication in a journal and/or online.
Repository: Institutional, governmental, disciplinary or other archive that hosts scholarly research.
Working paper: Working papers are similar to pre-prints, in that they are a draft version of a publication and have not undergone formal peer review. When posted online, they may provide an opportunity for the author to received feedback.
Take a look a the Open Access Vocabulary (PDF) published by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).