Open Access week is an annual event taking place from the 24th – 28th October.

Publishing open access has been celebrated and publicised during this week for the past 5 years, with the idea being to educate people about the benefits of open access, and to raise awareness in the scientific community.

Open access week is an international event, with events and activities taking place in over 100 countries, with more than 2,000 participants getting involved. The week is organised by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and will be publicised by libraries, institutions and universities the world over.

Open access was made possible with the creation of the internet, and since then has been steadily growing in popularity. Compared to traditional subscription journals, open access is a very new idea, so not enough readers and authors are aware of the quality and availability of open access journals and publishers. During the week of 24th to 28th October, academics and supporters the world over will be raising awareness for the potential of open access publishing.

The purpose of open access is to have educational material available for everyone to read, print, download, and distribute free of charge. All access barriers to the work are purposely removed, and copyright does not apply unless the work is used in further research.

Benefits of open access for authors include:

• A higher rate of citations for your article

• Greater online visibility for your work

• Faster publication speed in journals

• A wider availability of knowledge for further research

Readers also benefit from open access as they can download and read as many articles they like, without paying anything or being in any way restricted.

To read more visit the open access section of our website

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