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Copyright Management - Author Rights: Open Access

NIH Public Access Policy

Learn more about the NIH Public Access Policy with resources from the WCMC Library. Information includes: general information and FAQs, tutorials and presentations, and other resources such as a compliance guide, letter to publishers, and a submission flowchart.

Access the WCMC Library NIH Public Access Policy Page

What is Open Access?

Open access refers to scholarly work that is free and readily accessible online. Open access work can be located in repositories and archives (like Cornell eCommons), in journals with OA publishing models (like PloS Medicine), or in hybrid journals that allow the author to pay a fee to provide the article in an open access format.

Why Open Access?

There are many reasons for you to consider publishing your work as open access.

Open Access:

  • Removes access barriers to your work  (since your work is freely available and accessible online).
  • Reaches wider audiences (not limited to journal subscribers).
  • Increases your impact.
    • Read a study regarding increased visibility and citations on open access articles vs. articles in subscription based journals.
    • Read a study regarding improved citation count of open access articles vs non open access articles published in the same journal.
  • Decreases time to market and increases the exchange of ideas.
  • Some repositories allow upload of additional content (data, images, tables).

Open Access Options

  • The library has agreements with some publishers to waive Open Access fees, learn more here. 
  • You can make your work openly available by depositing it in Cornell’s institutional repository or another archive, or by publishing in an open access or hybrid journal. To deposit your work in a repository you may need to attach an author’s addendum to your publisher copyright transfer agreement.
  • To see how "open" a desired journal is, check out SPARC's Open Access Spectrum Evaluation Tool
  • To locate open access journals search the Directory of open access Journals.
  • To locate publishers that have a hybrid or paid option for open access visit SHERPA RoMEO.
  • To view open access repositories visit OpenDOAR.
  • To view a summary of your research funder's open access policies (including mandates, policies, and restrictions)  visit SHERPA JULIET.