20 October 2014 marks the first day of the 7th International Open Access Week, an event commemorating the freedom of sharing scholarly research and facilitating knowledge creation from most copyright and licensing restrictions.
What is Open Access?
Open Access literature comprises scholarly material that is available online, free of charge, and allows mostly unrestricted usage.
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Routes of Open Access
There are two common ways of achieving Open Access — Gold Open Access or Green Open Access. NUS Libraries supports Green Open Access which involves depositing your works in repositories.
- Such repositories could be institutionally-based, or they could be for specific disciplines. Some examples are SSRN for Social Science, arXiv for Math and Science, and PubMed for Health and Medicine.
- There are also research-based social networks, e.g., ResearchGate and Academia.edu that function like social media channels for scholars and researchers to share and discuss their works.
Why Open Access?
- Open Access publications are a boon because we would not need to pay to read them.
- If you are a scholar or researcher, open access provides a viable alternative to the traditional method of placing your works with publishers, and surrendering your copyright ownership to the publisher in the process.
- Open Access articles assigned with creative common licenses allow you to control how others can use your works.
Open Access and ScholarBank@NUS
In conjunction with Open Access Week, NUS Libraries officially launched its Scholarly Communication Website which features information about Open Access and our institutional repository, ScholarBank@NUS.
ScholarBank@NUS houses the university’s scholarly output comprising journal articles, conference papers, patented works, as well as student theses. It provides open access to scholarly publications, and preserves the institution’s works for future generations.
As an NUS researcher, why else should you deposit your works at ScholarBank@NUS?
1. ScholarBank@NUS increases your visibility through different channels, including FindMore@NUSL and Google Scholar.
- Articles deposited in institutional repositories would appear in Google Scholar, as the repositories’ platform providers are constantly working with the latter to optimize indexing compatibility.
- Therefore, by depositing your works in ScholarBank@NUS, you are also increasing the probability of your works being cited.
2. ScholarBank@NUS has a global outreach; between September 2013 and August 2014, the top 10 countries, such as China, India, the US, UK and the Netherlands, contributed to 870,214 (78.1%) of the 1,113,865 total page views.
3. ScholarBank@NUS is an institutional repository; therefore, it provides a stable and secured archive to host your works, thereby ensuring they are in permanent storage and easily retrieved.
As a supporter of Open Access, NUS Libraries is committed to partner and support you as the researcher in your scholarly communication endeavors. Join us in celebration of Open Access Week by submitting your works in ScholarBank@NUS!
Need more information on submitting your works in ScholarBank@NUS? Email us at scholarbank@nus.edu.sg
By Raven Sim and Chew Shu Wen
NUSL Scholarly Communication Promotion & Publishing Advisory