The open access spectrum

The open access movement has been growing for 10 years since Open Access was first clearly defined in 2002. There is now a range of methods for making scholarly publications free to readers, and there is debate on the precise elements that make research outputs truly 'open' for all types of reuse.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has released a new guide called How Open Is It? which describes the components that make up open access and analyses where a journal lies on the open access spectrum. The guide lays out Reader rights, Reuse rights, Copyright, Author posting rights, Automatic posting and Machine readability in a simple matrix and aims to help authors make informed choices about where to publish.

How Open Is It? is published with a request for public comment.