How and why would I publish my work open access?

There are many reasons to consider making your research openly available. It might be that you want to ensure the widest possible readership. Perhaps you think that access to your research might benefit those who would not otherwise have access (such as those in developing countries, or members of the Canadian public without university library access). It might also be that your funder mandates that you make your research openly available, either immediately after publication or after an embargo period. Whatever your reasons, the resources below will provide a starting point as you consider the issue.  Contact Cara Bradley, Research & Scholarship Librarian, for more information on open access publishing.

Just getting started? Introduction to Open Access
Open Access Explained

How do I make my research Open Access?
There are two different routes for making your research open access (OA): gold and green. The gold route to OA is by publishing your research in an open access journal. The green route is publishing with any publisher who allows you to deposit a copy of your research in open repositories.

Green Open Access
The University of Regina has its own repository oURspace, where you can deposit publications, conference papers, projects, etc. You may also want to look for a subject specific repository in the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).

Gold Open Access
The best way to locate an appropriate journal to publish in is by looking at the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). DOAJ is a directory of nearly 10,000 Open Access, full-text, and often peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
There are often ways to make your research open access without incurring a cost, but some gold open access journals or hybrid journals (subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access) may require a fee.

Flowchart
This flowchart ( 29 KB) walks you through the decisions involved in determining how best to make your research available open access.

What are my rights as an author?
Author Rights - A brief presentation about five rights of researchers in scholarly publishing.

Resources for authors
General information about author's rights from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).

Funding Agency Mandates
Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications—the official policy for those holding Tri-Agency grants (SSHRC, CIHR, NSERC) granted after May 2015.

SHERPA Juliet—a directory of research funders’ open access policies.