Frequently Asked Questions

Contents

1. About Adelaide Research & Scholarship
2. How to Participate?
3. Copyright and Publication
4. About Open Access
   1. What is Open Access?
5. References

About Open Access

What is Open Access?

The open access movement is about using the Web to open the research literature of the world to any user wishing to access it, for free. All that is needed is access to the Internet, and enough bandwidth to download the document.

The benefits of this approach are that:

1. Publicly funded research is made publicly available
2. Researchers will be able to access and use all the literature, rather than just what appears in the journals that their institution can afford. Open Access means that usage and citations will be based on what research is best and most pertinent, not just what is affordable.
3. Researchers will gain an increase in citations to high quality work, wherever it is published (a piece of research hidden in either an obscure or an expensive journal is not likely to be cited today). Research shows a 50% to 250% increase in citations when documents are made freely accessible online.

Where can I find out more about Open Access?

There's a comprehensive discussion, with many useful links, on Wikipedia.