Open Access Week is happening worldwide between 19 – 25 October 2020. It is an annual global event that aims to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access. It also aims to promote the benefits of Open Access and to give practitioners an opportunity to share their experiences and inspire wider participation in the movement.

Open Access LibGuide

To mark this year’s Open Access Week , the Online Research Collections in the Library have created an online guide that provides an introduction to and overview of Open Access. The aim of the guide is to give a comprehensive introduction to Open Access publishing and it supports our commitment to making Open Access as easy as possible for our researchers at Goldsmiths. It is also aimed at students wishing to access Open Access resources, providing links to some of the key Open Access resources and browser tools.

Publisher Open Access Deals

The team have also created an introduction to the Publisher Open Access Deals Available to Goldsmiths Authors. These agreements, commonly known as Read and Publish agreements, combine the Library’s journal subscriptions with Open Access publication, enabling papers with a Goldsmiths corresponding author, to be made Gold Open Access. Goldsmiths currently has deals with SAGE, Springer and Wiley.

Plan S

One of the biggest current issues in Open Access is the implementation of Plan S.

At the end of 2018, cOAlition S – a consortium of research funders (including UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Wellcome Trust among others), supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council – launched a new Open Access publishing initiative called Plan S, which comes into effect on 1st January 2021. Plan S is an initiative that hopes to make immediate, full Open Access a reality by committing to the Open Access publication without embargo of all scholarly publications that result from research funded by public grants.

The team have put together a guide that explains Plan S and its impact on our researchers at Goldsmiths.

Open Access at Goldsmiths

There are articles on various aspects of Open Access on the Library Blog that give a taster of the range of Open Access activities taking place at Goldsmiths, including a reflection on Open Access from the perspective of a postgraduate student at Goldsmiths, Open Access developments in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a short introduction  on using Open Access Button and Unpaywall to discover Open Access content online, and even an Open Access Limerick .

The Online Research Collections team support and develop Open Access provision at Goldsmiths through our institutional repository Goldsmiths Research Online (GRO) and our Open Access journal platform Goldsmiths Journals Online (GOJO).  For all Open Access enquiries, please contact the Online Research Collections team at Goldsmiths gro@gold.ac.uk