We’re celebrating Open Access week, a global event highlighting the importance of making research openly available.This year’s theme focuses on Climate Justice and seeks to encourage connection and collaboration among the climate movement and the international open community.
What is Open Access?
Open Access makes publications freely available that would otherwise be restricted access, behind a paywall. There are 2 main routes to Open Access, by authors paying a processing charge or self-archiving a peer-reviewed version of their work in a repository.
The benefits of Open Access are wide reaching, both allowing researchers to increase their audience which can result in greater impact, and giving users access to research they might not otherwise be able to see. This includes practitioners and policy makers who can apply findings, and researchers from countries and institutions that are less able to access the work.
Open Access at City
We make the research undertaken at City, University of London, available Open Access through City Research Online (CRO), where over 20,000 publications are archived. Much of the use is from within the UK and Developed Countries, however 15 % of traffic in the last year came from Developing Countries (as defined by UNESCO).
We will be posting short blogposts each day this week covering an aspect of Open Access publications and more information about Open Access Week. You can browse City Research Online for City academics publications. City academics looking to upload research can do so through Elements, and help on how to do so can be found in our Elements Help guide.