Readings

Publications, articles, and presentations related to Open Access, published by SPARC and other supportive organizations.

The Right to Research: The student guide to opening access to scholarship
Developed in close collaboration with students, this guide is a tool student OA advocates will use to engage more of their peers. The Right to Research: helps students recognize the problem of access; introduces the principle of Open Access; indicates how Open Access can make life as a student easier, advance research, widen access to those who need it, and increase visibility for student scholars; and offers ways to support OA. New in January 2008. See The Right to Research Web site for details.

Open Access: A SPARC Brochure
This brochure, produced with the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College & Research Libraries, makes the case for the open access model of scholarly communication and how it benefits authors, readers, teachers, scholars, and scientists alike. Facts and figures demonstrate how open access to scholarly research capitalizes on Internet connectivity to increase a research article's use and impact. The brochure suggests steps authors of journal articles can take to provide open access to their work. This action can be at the local level in providing access to their own journal articles, and at a broader level to support open access publishers.

The brochure is available to download in PDF.

Directories

SPARC Open Access Program Survey
A resource for librarians and administrators creating events to promote open access among faculty members, this Web site will include details of conferences, seminars, brown-bag lunches, faculty meeting presentations, mailings, and every other form of outreach that you or your colleagues have found successful - or not.

Directory of Open Access Journals
This reference covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals in all subjects and languages.

Online Discussion Forums

SPARC Open Access Newsletter & Forum
With SPARC support, Peter Suber produces a monthly newsletter that offers in-depth analysis of open access-related issues. Read it online or sign up to receive the email version. You may also wish to join the exchange of ideas in the SPARC Open Access Forum, also moderated by Peter.

SPARC Open Data Discussion List
According to the list’s moderator, Peter Murray-Rust of the Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics at the University of Cambridge (UK), “The emerging Open Data movement shares many goals with the Open Access and Open Source movements, but encompasses its own distinct issues that are in need of examination by the scientific community. This list is intended to facilitate that important discussion."

Explore SPARC's advocacy program for details of international federal and funder policies that support open access, including the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, US National Institutes of Health, the US Federal Research Public Access Act, and more.

SPARC Europe

Open Access Working Group (OAWG)
The Open Access Working Group (OAWG), initiated by SPARC, is a group of like-minded organizations that began meeting in the Fall of 2003 to build a framework for collective advocacy of open access to research. The group seeks to build broad-based recognition that the economic and societal benefits of scientific and scholarly research investments are maximized through open access to the results of that research.

Peter Suber
An advocate for open access, Peter is the scholarly community's town crier for open access. All the latest related news is reported in the frequently updated Open Access News Blog. Key events are noted and discussed in the SPARC Open Access Forum, and a monthly round-up is made in the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.