Open Access Publishing

Open Access (OA) generally refers to making scientific and scholarly knowledge and information freely accessible online.  There is a global trend in providing open access to research and scholarly outputs, e.g. articles, conference papers, working papers, theses, etc. To know more about the definition of Open Access, view Open Access Overview by Peter Suber (Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Open Access Project Director at Public Knowledge, and Senior Researcher at SPARC).

Here are two main routes for providing OA to research article:

  • Publish the article in an OA journal, or select an "open access" option in a subscription journal (referred to as a hybrid journal).

  • Deposit a copy of the research papers into an OA Repository –

    PolyU researchers can deposit your own research papers in the PolyU Institutional Research Archive (PolyU IRA) free of charge. PolyU authors are welcome to deposit previously published materials in the IRA. Currently, most publishers will accept and allow the deposit in open access repositories of papers published in their journals, subject to certain conditions.  The SHERPA RoMEOdatabase (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php) provides a summary of copyright and archiving policies adopted by major publishers in the world.  Our IRA staff can advise you and will be happy to check the copyright agreement related to any materials that you would like to add to the IRA.

    PolyU researchers are welcome to deposit conference papers and presentations, pre-prints, working papers, technical reports, books, book chapters, patents, theses and dissertations, images, drawings, videos, and datasets, too.  For more information, please visit the PolyU Institutional Research Archive webpage.

Making your research output openly accessible will help you reach out to a wider audience and maximize the impact of your research.

Some OA journal services:

Other useful link: