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Wouldn’t it be great if you could access scholarly research online without having to go through a pay wall or subscription service?
Currently, most scholarly data, research, and information are only available through journal subscriptions, pay walls, logins, or library affiliations, making it difficult for researchers and students worldwide to access materials, and therefore hampering intellectual inquiry and the ability to learn from and build upon previous research.
The Open Access (OA) movement seeks to transform the way scholarly information is made available to the world. Open access literature is defined as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”¹ Through open access, information can be disseminated faster to a much broader audience. OA materials are available to anyone, anywhere, and at any time, regardless of that individual’s race, sex, gender, sexual-orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, or geographic location. Because of this, OA materials have the potential to “maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship.”² Here at the University of South Florida Libraries, we are committed to increasing the sharing of knowledge equitably by providing, maintaining, and supporting the creation of open access content for our academic community.
Help us celebrate Open Access Week 2020 from October 19th – 25th by exploring new ideas, participating in important conversations, and helping us work towards building a better system to facilitate knowledge. Explore our Open Access initiatives below:
Scholar Commons
Through Scholar Commons, the USF Libraries publish, preserve, and promote faculty publications, student theses and dissertations, conference and event proceedings, and textbooks. With more than 16 million downloads from over 200 different countries, publications on Scholar Commons reach the global research community.
Faculty Research Profiles
These profiles provide a faculty member’s discipline and research information as well as offers links to their published works and projects.
Theses and Dissertations
This is a digital collection of completed and approved graduate works collected through the Office of Graduate Studies submission process and are approved by the faculty, student, and USF.
Open Access Journals
Scholar Commons hosts 23 OA journals. USF Libraries’ commitment to true open access extends to authors, meaning that there are no article or submission charges for OA publications hosted on or published in Scholar Commons.
Textbook Affordability Project
The Textbook Affordability Project (TAP) promotes awareness of textbook affordability issues and provides solutions to ensure that course materials are up-to-date and satisfy academic needs, while remaining affordable for students. TAP finds open access textbooks for students and faculty to freely use, and also coordinates with Scholar Commons’ Open Access Textbooks collection.
To find out more about open access, check out OA Publishing at lib.usf.edu/scholarly-research-and-communication/open-access-publishing/.
¹Suber, P. (2012). Open Access. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. p. 18. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/10752204
²SPARC. About. International Open Access Week. http://www.openaccessweek.org/page/about