Page:Open access and the humanities - contexts, controversies and the future.pdf/19



In the ﬁrst decade and a half of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the words 'open access' have been uttered with increasing frequency in universities around the world. Beginning as little more than a quiet murmur in niche scientiﬁc sub-disciplines but developing towards a globally mandated revolution in scholarly communication, the ascent of open access looks set to continue. Despite this rapid, worldwide rise, however, many misunderstandings about the phenomenon remain. At the most basic level, this includes the key question: what exactly is 'open access'? Regardless of the nuances and complexities that will be discussed in this book, 'open access' can be clearly and succinctly deﬁned. The term ‘open access’ refers to the removal of price and permission barriers to scholarly research. Open access means peer-reviewed academic research work that is free to read online and that anybody may redistribute and reuse, with some restrictions.

For a piece of academic research to be called 'open access', it must be available digitally for anybody to read at no ﬁnancial cost beyond those intrinsic to using the internet; the removal of price barriers. This is similar to the majority of content on the world wide web but it is not the basis on which scholarly publication has historically relied. After all, most websites do not charge readers to access their content while, by contrast, most academic publications are currently bought by libraries as either one-off purchases or ongoing subscriptions. Open access means implementing a new system that allows free access to peer-reviewed scholarly research on the world wide web. The term also means, perhaps more contentiously, that people 1