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Academic Works - CUNY's institutional repository: Open Access

User guide

What is Open Access?

"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder."  (Peter Suber)

Read more from Peter Suber:  What is Open Access? 

Directories of Open Access Journals

There are varying degrees of open access publishing:

  • Journals with exclusively open access articles
  • Journals which require subscription for current content, but allow access after an embargo period.
  • Journals which offer the option for authors to publish under open access (for a fee) 

The following directories provide information about open access journals. 

  • SHERPA/RoMEO
    Provides easy access to publisher policies on open access.
  • UlrichsWeb  
    This global serials directory indicates whether or not a journal is full open access. You may search the Key Feature field in the Advanced Search for “open access,” or search by title, publisher, etc., and then “Narrow Results” to open access journals by clicking the check box for “Open Access” in the “Key Features” area to the left of the results list. Current (Restricted to ODU)
  • Directory of Open Access Journals  
    List of quality journals that publish only open access content. Provides free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, aiming to cover all subjects and languages. There are a growing number of journals in the directory, with many of them searchable on article level.
  • PLoS: Public Library of Science
    PLOS is a nonprofit publisher of open access journals in the sciences.
  • JURN
    JURN indexes "open access" e-journals in the arts and humanities, along with other relevant arts and scholarly publications offering free content.
  • Online Journals Published with Digital Commons
    List of open access journals published by universities with the Digital Commons repository.
  • Beall’s List of Predatory Open Access Publishers
    Indicates open access publishers to avoid because they provide inferior and predatory services.

Other Useful Tools

Open Access Explained!

OA Ebook Collections

There are a number of open access and free ebook collections available online. Most provide limited views and some full-text content, usually books in the public domain.

  • Directory of Open Access Books
    A directory of academic, peer reviewed open access books.
  • epubBooks.com
    Contains free public domain eBooks that you can download in the EPUB format.
  • Google Books
    Previews and full-text of books. Full-text books are going to be books that are out of copyright, or books in which Google received permission from the publisher to reproduce.
  • HathiTrust Digital Library
    HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries. The Digital Library is a repository providing access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives.
  • Internet Archive: Ebooks and Texts Archive
    The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books.
  • Open Library

Open Access @CUNY

 

Image result for open access cuny

Open Access @ CUNY is a site created by a team of CUNY library faculty interested in highlighting and advocating open access scholarship across the university. It actively posts on all topics related to Open Access, a list of resources, as well as events taking place at CUNY.