Open Access Week

This week is open access week, so here is a little introduction to the open access movement in the UK and our institutional repository Goldsmiths Research Online.

At its core, Open Access aims to make academic research free at the point of use for researchers and the public. The main reason for this in the UK is that most research is funded through various channels by the government and therefore by tax payers. By charging subscription fees for access to this research, publishers are essentially asking users to pay for the research twice and this is what Open Access aims to avoid. To facilitate this, last year the UK Government accepted the proposals set out by the Finch  report, including the Open Access “gold” model as standard for publicly-funded research. Gold open access means publishing costs are paid up-front and articles are published in open access journals.