OAC 2025 Professional key terms

Free, online availability of scholarly research outputs, allowing anyone to read, download, and reuse them without financial, legal, or technical barriers, subject to proper attribution.

A 2002 declaration that defined open access and advocated for its adoption, introducing two main strategies: self-archiving and open access journals.

A broader movement to make scientific research, data, and dissemination accessible to all levels of society, encompassing open access, open data, open source, and open methodologies.

Guidelines stating that research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, emphasizing machine-actionability and proper metadata.

An initiative by cOAlition S requiring that publications from funded research be immediately open access without embargo, typically under a CC BY license.

A fee charged by some open access journals to authors or their institutions to cover publishing costs, making the article freely available upon publication.

A contract between institutions and publishers that combines subscription access with funding for open access publishing, often covering APCs for affiliated authors.

A contract designed to shift scholarly publishing from subscription-based to open access models, often combining reading access and publishing services in one deal.

A set of standard legal tools that allow creators to grant permission for others to share and use their work under specified conditions, such as attribution or non-commercial use.

A Creative Commons license that allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon a work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creator.

A contract in which an author assigns some or all copyrights to a publisher, often restricting the author's ability to share or reuse their own work.

The legal rights held by creators over their works, including the ability to control reproduction, distribution, and adaptation, which can be retained or transferred.

The practice of authors depositing their research outputs in an institutional or subject repository to make them openly accessible, often allowed by publishers under certain conditions.

An online archive managed by an institution to collect, preserve, and disseminate the scholarly output of its members, often providing open access.

A version of a scholarly manuscript made publicly available before formal peer review and publication in a journal.

The version of a scholarly article after peer review and revisions but before final journal formatting and publication.

A long-lasting reference to a digital object, such as a DOI or ORCID iD, that ensures reliable linking and citation over time.

A persistent identifier assigned to digital objects like journal articles or datasets, enabling stable linking and citation.

A unique identifier for researchers that disambiguates names and links to their professional information and outputs.

Structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource.

A policy by a funder or institution requiring that research outputs be made open access, often with specific conditions on timing, version, or license.

The state of adhering to open access policies, funder requirements, or institutional mandates, often monitored through reporting and verification.

The quantitative analysis of publications and their citations to measure research impact, productivity, and collaboration patterns.

Alternative metrics that measure online attention to research outputs, such as social media mentions, downloads, and saves, complementing traditional citation metrics.

A metric calculated by Clarivate that reflects the average number of citations to articles published in a journal over a specific period.

A declaration calling for improvements in the ways research outputs are evaluated, specifically discouraging the use of journal-based metrics like the Journal Impact Factor for assessing individual researchers.

Assessment practices that consider diverse research outputs and impacts, avoid inappropriate use of metrics, and promote fairness and transparency.

Research data that is made freely available for anyone to access, use, and share, often with minimal restrictions and under open licenses.

A document outlining how research data will be collected, stored, shared, and preserved during and after a project.

A publication that exploits the open access model by charging fees without providing legitimate editorial and peer review services.

Principles and practices that ensure fair treatment, representation, and participation of all individuals, particularly those from underrepresented groups, in scholarly communication.

A term used to describe regions with lower income and political power, often facing barriers to participating equitably in global open access publishing.

The tendency to favor English-language research in publishing, indexing, and evaluation, which disadvantages non-English speaking researchers.

A review model where identities of authors and reviewers are known to each other, and review reports may be published alongside the article.

Teaching, learning, and research materials that are freely available or released under open licenses, allowing reuse and adaptation.

Efforts to promote open access and open science by raising awareness, influencing policy, and engaging stakeholders such as researchers, institutions, and funders.

Educational activities that build skills and knowledge about open access, such as workshops on self-archiving, licensing, and data management.

The process of involving stakeholders, including researchers, librarians, and the public, in open access initiatives to ensure they are inclusive and effective.

Shared platforms, services, and standards that support open science, such as repositories, persistent identifiers, and metadata systems.

The system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved.