The importance of open access to academic research
You might be seeing signs and social media promotion of International Open Access Week around Deakin this week. Deakin Library strongly supports Open Access Week and we’re running several training sessions for postgraduates and academics this year.
But what is open access, and why is it important?
Open access allows people anywhere in the world to access quality academic research at no cost. This access is available regardless of whether they are a member of an academic library or if their library can afford to subscribe to academic journals or databases.
Often, access to high-quality academic research is limited to academic libraries and institutions who can afford to pay for journal subscriptions. Open access plays a critical role in providing equal access to information for everyone, regardless of geographic location, socioeconomic status, education level or identity.
The theme for this year’s Open Access Week is “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge”. This means establishing new ways to make open access even more efficient and widely practiced. That’s one of our goals in the library, and we are always looking for new ways to make more Deakin research available with open access.
Deakin University supports open access through our research repository called DRO (Deakin Research Online), where we provide free access to some of the research published by Deakin academics and research students.
If you are a researcher or higher degree research student at Deakin, we hope you’ll join us this week for Researcher Training via Skype.
Want to learn more but can’t attend a session? Library staff are always here to help if you’d like to find out more about Open Access Publishing, or about making your research Open Access in DRO. Contact us through Library Chat or by phone, or pop in at one of our service desks if you’d like to discuss more.
If you want to learn more about open access and why it’s important to the advancement of scientific knowledge, watch the video below: