Open Access Week 2017 runs from 23-29th October. Swansea University is taking the opportunity to celebrate the excellent work being done by all our researchers to make ever-increasing numbers of publications open access, free for the world to download on our repository, Cronfa. We currently have over 3,500 papers available, many of which have been released from behind publisher paywalls so that there is free global access to our excellent research.
Open Access does not come without a cost: it may not be paying article processing charges, but a cost in time for researchers to complete green open access procedures. Open Access Week this year is a reminder of the benefits that open access brings and why the effort is worth it: “Open in order to…”
- Increase access to knowledge
- Facilitate collaboration
- Raise your research visibility
- Improve public health
The benefits of open access have been demonstrated in many studies and this article from 2016 gives an excellent overview of the benefits of open research more generally.
Swansea University currently publishes several of its own open access journals. Most recently we launched the International Journal of Population Data Science ; we also have the Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies and some excellent student journals (e.g. Gorffennol, Populo) from the College of Arts & Humanities. We also see the launch this year of our open access e-theses service, allowing Swansea University postgraduate researchers to promote their research on a global platform.
The Library Research Support team are happy to advise on any issues or questions around open access, and we also have a Research Data service to support activities around open data.