Open Access
Open Access is a publishing model that
provides immediate, worldwide, barrier-free access to the full text of research
articles without requiring a subscription to the journal in which these
articles are published. Accordingly, readers are allowed to copy, use,
distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute
derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to
proper attribution of authorship.
In this model, the publication costs
are usually covered by the author’s institution or research funds. These Open
Access charges replace subscription charges and allow the publishers to make
the published material freely available to all interested online readers. At
the same time, authors who publish in Open Access journals retain the copyright
of their article.