Open Access
The Open Access (OA) movement aims to enable the widest possible dissemination of scientific information, without any economic or other barriers, in order to facilitate the circulation and development of knowledge. It encourages researchers to regain control of their publications and to free themselves from the commercial policies of major publishers by proposing new alternative publishing and dissemination models for science.
O
pen Access refers to the free and immediate online availability of scientific publications, allowing everyone to read, download, copy, distribute, and use these works without financial or technical barriers (Budapest Open Access Initiative).
Its goal is to make science available to everyone equitably, to improve the visibility and impact of publications, and to facilitate the development of knowledge.
Born in the 1990s, the Open Access movement originally emerged as a response to the near‑monopoly of major publishers over publications resulting from research and teaching. It first proposed new alternative modes of scientific dissemination (distribution of preprints, self‑archiving in open access) and then soon, innovative publishing models (open access scientific journals, Diamond Open Access…). It thus contributes to the diversity of the publishing landscape (bibliodiversity).
Open Access is based above all on strong values:
- Transparency
- Collaboration among scientists and equal access to resources
- The democratization of knowledge, which is considered a common good, and the refusal of its privatization by a few economic actors
- Integrity, which requires that publicly funded research be made available to the public
How can I disseminate my research in Open ACCESS ?
Open Access dissemination can be achieved in two ways:
- The Green Road consists of depositing a version of the published work in an open archive or a thematic or institutional repository.
- The Gold Road consists of publishing directly in Open Access.
Green Route
The Green Road of Open Access (Green OA) consists of self‑archiving publications. The author deposits a copy of their scientific publications and makes them available in open access. This model is free for both the author and the reader. Open-access repositories are related to an institution, a research funding body or a research field.
Gold Route
The Gold Road of Open Access (Gold OA) consists of publishing directly in open access through the publisher. There are different open access publishing models depending on who covers the publication costs.
- Diamond: free for both the reader AND the author. This is a non‑commercial model led by the scientific community itself and funded through institutions and research funders.
- Freemium: reading the publication is free, but the reader must pay if they want additional services.
- Membership: the author pays a membership fee and can then publish a certain number of articles per year.
- Gold Route with APC (Article Processing Charges): paid by the author and free for the reader, the opposite of the traditional subscription‑based publishing model. This type of publication is considered “fair” if the APCs effectively cover publication costs while generating a reasonable profit (approximately $700). Unfortunately, APC amounts are rising from $1,000 to $10,000 per article. In such cases, the goal is no longer to disseminate science but to maximize profit by diverting this money from research itself.
The pitfalls of Open Access publishing with APCs
- Hybrid journals: subscription‑based journals that also offer authors the option to pay APCs to make their individual article open access. In this model, the publisher is paid twice: through subscriptions (whose prices do not decrease, on the contrary) and through APCs. Worse still, APCs charged for an article are higher in these hybrid journals than in genuine open access journals.
- Predatory journals: fake open access journals that require APC payment without providing the associated editorial services, particularly peer review. These are simply scams.
To avoid being misled: use Compass to Publish.
Open Access at ULiège
By establishing an ambitious institutional deposit policy, our University has positioned itself as an important Open Access actor both nationally and internationally. The compulsory deposit mandate adopted by the University in 2007 enabled the success of ORBi, the institutional repository of the University of Liège. This commitment to Open Access has been reinforced with the creation of various Open Access platforms designed to widely disseminate ULiège’s scientific output.
