ALA TechSource – Vol 51, No 6 (2015) > Walt Crawford – Chapter 1. Idealism and Opportunism: A Gold OA Overview

“Open-access (OA) literature is available online to be read for free by anyone, anytime, anywhere, without registration or other hindrance—as long as they have Internet access. That’s the core of OA, and it’s a growing factor in scholarly articles (and to a lesser extent monographs). But even as OA grows, confusion as to the amount and nature of OA publishing seems to grow, aided by a lack of clear, concrete information and sometimes by deliberate misinformation. This report grows from an attempt to determine some of the facts behind the confusion by the simple process of looking at each OA journal site and seeing what was going on. After a quick refresher course on the basics of OA, this chapter defines the portion of OA being considered here and some of the fundamental issues. An overview of mainstream OA journals shows the extent to which it makes sense to group them into three large and two very small areas—and what constitutes the mainstream. Chapters 2 through 6 look at OA journals in more detail and with different approaches: journals that charge author-side fees or don’t charge such fees; journals by volume of articles; some of the economics involved; journals by starting date; and journals by subject category. We’ll also look at “journals”—things that have journal names but haven’t actually published articles—and other oddities. Chapters 7 and 8 consider ways to deal with OA journals, suggestions for advising would-be writers, and what libraries and librarians might do to improve the field. Why should librarians care? Public librarians should care because OA can provide access to research that your patrons may find valuable and that you can’t afford to subscribe to. Academic librarians should care because your institution can’t keep buying all the journals your community could use and because your library can play an active role in improving the situation (possibly reducing your costs in the long run). All librarians should care because OA means more access to more scholarship for more people…”