Open Access Publishing Support: Open Access Overview

"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free to readers, and free of copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the Internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder" (Peter Suber).

The two most common OA publishing models are Gold and Green.

• Green OA, also known as self-archiving, is when authors post an earlier version of their manuscript in a repository.
• Gold OA means that the final published version of an article is immediately, permanently, and freely available on a publisher's website.

UC Statements on Open Access

The UC Office of Scholarly Communication has various resources that provide an overview of open access, the benefits of open access, models of open access publishing, and UC's open access publishing policy and initiatives. Below is a list of some of these resources.

There are three UC systemwide OA policies. 

• Academic Senate Policy, adopted July 23, 2013, grants Senate faculty members the right to make their published articles' final post-peer review manuscripts available to the public in an open access repository. 
• Presidential Open Access Policy, adopted on October 23, 2015, extended all rights covered under the Academic Senate policy to non-Senate employees and students.
• Policy on Open Access for Theses and Dissertations enables the UC campuses also provide open access to theses and dissertations by depositing them in eScholarship (UC’s open access repository and publishing platform) on behalf of their students.

By participating in UC Open Access Policies, you can view OA policy texts and histories; publisher information; an FAQ; deposit information; and find instructions for generating a waiver or an embargo. Under the Policies, UC authors retain the rights to their works.

The UC Publication Management System (UCPMS) is an easy way to comply with the Academic Senate Open Access Policy. Publications uploaded to the UCPMS appear in eScholarship, UC’s institutional repository.

Plans are in process to roll out the UCPMS to employees covered under the Presidential Open Access Policy. Until then, non-Senate employees can deposit their manuscripts directly into eScholarship. Participating in the UC open access policies is a no-cost way to make articles, electronic theses, and dissertations freely available to the public. Each publication receives a permalink (unique identifier), proper citation information, and usage statistics.

Important UC Open Access policies and initiatives