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Everything about Open access
Unrestricted availability of scholarly publications
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined, or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright, which regulates post-publication uses of the work. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: Open accessA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Pamela Jordan, Sara Mura & Sue Hamilton. 2025. New sensory approaches to the past: applied methods in sensory heritage and archaeology. London: UCL Press; 978-1-80008-868-9 paperback £45 ebook OpenAccess https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088696Influential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Understanding Open AccessThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: #OpenAccess: Free online, open-access crowdsource-reviewed publishing is the future; traditional peer-reviewed journals are on the way outCited 15 times
- Go sideways: PreprintA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Open peer reviewA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
No dictionary entry for this exact phrase.
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
#OpenAccess: Free online, open-access crowdsource-reviewed publishing is the future; traditional peer-reviewed journals are on the way out
Investigation of the Clinical Value of Anesthetic Preconditioning (An openaccess database)
IEEE OpenAccess
Clare Lewis & Gabriel Moshenska (ed.). 2023. Life-writing in the history of archaeology: critical perspectives. London: University College London Press; 978-1-80008-450-6 paperback £35, OpenAccess. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800084506
Steve E. Falconer & Patricia L. Fall. 2025. An archaeological portrait of life in a Bronze Age Cypriot village: scientific explorations at Politiko-Troullia. Leiden: Sidestone; 978-94-6426-367-1 paperback €20 online OpenAccess https://doi.org/10.59641/d4g0a1b2c3
Ad OpenAccess
Alice E. Blackwell, Fraser Hunter, Andreas Rau & Martin Goldberg (ed.). 2025. Silver beyond empire: the transition between late Roman and early medieval Europe. Leiden: Sidestone; paperback €80 online OpenAccess https://doi.org/10.59641/k1n7h8i9j0
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, Violent Becomings: state formation, sociality, and power in Mozambique. New York NY and London: Berghahn Books (hb US$110/£78 – 978 1 78533 236 4; pb US$29.95/£21 – 978 1 78533 293 7). 2016, 360 pp. Available Open Access at <https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/OpenAccess/BertelsenViolent/9781785334290_OA.pdf>.
🆕 Influential since 2022
Pamela Jordan, Sara Mura & Sue Hamilton. 2025. New sensory approaches to the past: applied methods in sensory heritage and archaeology. London: UCL Press; 978-1-80008-868-9 paperback £45 ebook OpenAccess https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088696
Jenefer Metcalfe. 2023. The archaeological survey of Nubia Season 2 (1908–9): report on the human remains. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-80327-636-6 paperback £55 ebook OpenAccess http://doi.org/10.32028/9781803276366.
Christopher Pare. 2025. Iron and the Iron Age: the introduction of iron in Europe and Western Asia. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-80583-000-9 hardback £70 ebook OpenAccess http://doi.org/10.32028/9781805830009
Alicia R. Ventresca-Miller. 2026. Domesticated: how cultivated species altered ancient Silk Road societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-778594-2 hardback £68 online OpenAccess https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197785973.001.0001
Siân E. Halcrow, Sabrina C. Agarwal, Carlina de la Cova, Rebecca Gowland & Gwen Robbins Schug (ed.). 2026. Bioarchaeology, activism and social justice: equitable and sustainable global futures. Cham: Springer; 978-3-032-10353-6 hardback £44.99 ebook OpenAccess https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-10354-3
📚 Books worth reading
Understanding Open Accessauthors alliance · 2015
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Preprint In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed…
- Open peer review Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the…
- PubMed Central PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life…
- PeerJ PeerJ is both a for profit, open access, and peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences and the publisher…
- List of academic publishers by preprint policy This is a list of publishers of academic journals by their submission policies regarding the use of preprints prior to publication (example list). Publishers'…
- Self-archiving Self-archiving is the act of (the author's) depositing a free copy of an electronic document online in order to provide open access to it. The term usually…
- Article processing charge An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making…
- Predatory publishing Predatory publishing, also known as write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is the usage of exploitative and fraudulent publishing models by academic…