Open Access is a publishing model which makes research freely available to read, avoiding subscriptions or paywalls.
Many Open Access journals are funded by the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs), while others do not charge for publication, instead funding their operation via organisational subsidies.
Open Access offers a number of benefits. It allows authors to retain copyright and other intellectual property rights over their work, unlike subscription publishing. It allows researchers and ‘citizen scientists’ to access research that was previously beyond their means. It increases the visibility and citation frequency of published research, and it addresses a long-standing inequity of research publishing: that publicly-funded research should be available to the public funding it.
