| abstract
| - The open access movement is said to have begun in 1966. The term describes a variety of activities that includes access to archives of indexed citations of articles, access to separate journal articles that were published in traditional, subscriber-pays journals, and access to free, online journals. In traditional, subscriber-pays publishing, the publisher, who holds the copyright to an article, pays most printing and distribution costs and, in order to read an article, the journal subscriber pays fees, whether for hard-copy or online versions. Sometimes an author is required to pay printing page charges for complex graphics or color presentations. "Open access" publishing generally means that the author or publisher, whoever holds the copyright to an article, grants all users unlimited, free access to, and license to copy and distribute, a work published in an open access journal (which may be published initially electronically or in hard-copy). Users can also make copies for their personal use, if authorship is properly attributed. Open access publishing often requires an author to pay for publishing or posting of a paper. Estimates of fees charged vary, but generally range from about $500 to $4,000. These charges may be paid by individual authors, or by institutions, pursuant to institutional subscription contracts with open access journals that cover publication charges for all authors affiliated with an institution. Typically, open access publishers require that a complete version of the work and related materials be deposited electronically in an online database that permits open access, distribution, interoperability (allowing users to extract and use the data in other research), and long-term archiving. In "free access" publishing neither an author nor a reader pays for articles to be published or posted on the Internet, but other open access features may not be mandatory. A few commercial publishers have adopted some open access features in their business models. However, the fundamental difference is that traditional publishers generally require readers to pay to read or print an article, or to search indexes of abstracts or citations. Open access publishers generally do not require readers to pay for these services. Some traditional publishers say they already provide open access in that they may make papers freely available online — but this is usually a year or two after publication. The publishers still hold copyright, and they may or may not allow the author to post his or her published articles in an open access repository or database, or on the author’s own website. The scope of open access repositories or archives varies. Some contain published journal articles or non published "grey literature" in all fields of science or in specific scientific disciplines. Some archive a specific university's researchers' preprints, articles, or research reports; or, as in the case of the National Institutes of Health model, articles, data, or other materials funded by an agency, but prepared for publication by traditional publishers. Some open access repositories archive only citations for articles or other materials; some archive both citations and full text materials; some allow free downloading and some do not.
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