Why Open Access

• Meaning of Open Access

  Open Access (OA) basically refers to the making of research outputs freely and easily available to everyone with an internet connection without any copyright, cost or other barriers. The concept and term was first defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003), and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003). Nowadays, researchers and OA advocates are striving to extend its meaning and to transform research output and access so as to make it more open and inclusive.

  There are two primary routes to Open Access depending on how the Open Access works are published and archived:

  Gold Open Access (Gold OA) makes the final version of an article freely and permanently accessible for everyone, immediately after it is published on the publisher’s platform. Copyright for the article is retained by the authors and most of the permission barriers are removed. Gold OA also allows the re-use of the work as long as the original authors are acknowledged and cited. An additional article processing charge (APC) may be charged by the publisher.

  Green Open Access (Green OA) involves authors self-archiving their articles by sharing them on their own website, or better still, in their institution’s repository or in some other public archive. Unlike Gold OA, the copyright for these articles usually resides with the publisher, or an affiliated society. There are restrictions as to how the work can be reused. Which article version can be used and when the article can be made openly available online may be subject to a publisher embargo period.

  Pivot Science Publications follows the Gold Open Access model and is responsible for making all papers immediately and freely available on our journals' website. Readers are free to use any content published in our journals without asking for permission from the authors or publisher, as long as the original work is correctly cited.

• The Importance of Open Access

  Non-Open Access academic publishers own the copyrights of the articles published in their journals. Readers must therefore pay to obtain access to the articles which they want to read. Although some researchers may be able to obtain access to the required articles via their host institutions where they have paid for journal access, the ever increasing cost of journal subscriptions has become a heavy financial burden for many institutions. Non-Open Access journals make scholarly research and knowledge dissemination very costly. Thus, only those who can afford the subscription have unrestricted access to the latest research findings.

  By contrast, research output published in Open Access journals can be read by anyone with access to the Internet. Readers and libraries do not have to pay for an individual article or journal subscription. Thus, Open Access levels the playing field so that an independent scholar, an adjunct faculty member at a small college, and a tenured faculty member at a major research university have the same level of access to a given open access article.

• Benefits for Authors

  As Open Access articles are freely and permanently available online, publishing in the Open Access mode rather than behind a paywall can help authors to publicize their research to a wider audience globally. Further, Open Access publications are also more likely to be included in search engines and indexing databases. As a result, greater number of readers has the potential to be converted into an increased number of citations for the authors.

  The online publishing of Open Access journals facilitates rapid publication. Accepted manuscripts are typically published online more rapidly in Open Access journals than in traditional, subscription-based and printed journals.

  Content published under a CC-BY 4.0 can be archived anywhere, allowing authors to easily comply with the requirements of research funders.