New Faculty Guide for Health Sciences Faculties

Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.

• Green OA publishing refers to the self-archiving of published or pre-publication works for free public use. Authors provide access to preprints or post-prints (with publisher permission) in an institutional or disciplinary archive such as KU Institutional Repository and arXiv.org.
• Gold OA publishing refers to works published in an open access journal and accessed via the journal or publisher’s website. Examples of Gold OA include PLOS (Public Library of Science) and BioMed Central.
• Article processing charge (APC): The fee that publishers of some open access journals charge in order to publish articles. Such fees are usually levied per article and are usually paid by the institutions or funding bodies that fund the author(s) work, although some authors may find alternative ways of paying.

The KU Institutional Repository maintained by the Library is an open access publication platform and search interface for the scientific output of KU academic and research staff and graduate students. It can house open-access articles, conference proceedings, theses, working papers, technical reports, and other types of research data.