DEFINITIONS, DECLARATIONS, STATEMENTS

One of the many foundational documents in the Open Access movement that defines open access in research and outlines the principles on which it is founded.

Berlin Declaration. https://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration

The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities and is foundational to the open access movement. It promotes the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider.

Calgary Statement on Free Access to Legal Information (2011). https://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Calgary_Statement_2011-05-14.pdf

A statement from the Council of Canadian Academic Law Library Directors calling on all Canadian law schools, courts, legislatures, and governments to commit to electronic publication and urges faculty members to use Creative Commons licensing for their scholarship.

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship (2009). https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/durhamstatement

A statement from the directors of the law libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Yale University calling on all law schools to publish their journals electronically with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats.

IFLA Statement on Government Provision of Public Legal Information in the Digital Age (2016). https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/clm/statements/ifla-statement-on-public-legal-information.pdf

A statement by the International Federation of Library Associations for governments to make public legal information more accessible by providing it on a digital, no-fee basis, to protect the integrity of this information using appropriate authentication measures, and to create policies that facilitate long-term preservation for permanent access.

Montreal Declaration on Free Access to Law (2007). http://www.falm.info/declaration/

A declaration by legal information institutes to promote and support free access to public legal information throughout the world. It defines public legal information as that produced by public bodies that have a duty to produce law and make public, including primary and secondary legal sources and legal documents produced as a result of public funding.

Suber, P. (2012). Open Access. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://openaccesseks.mitpress.mit.edu/

A concise introduction to the basics of open access, describing what it is (and isn’t) and showing that it is easy, fast, inexpensive, legal, and beneficial.

OPEN ACCESS AT YORK UNIVERSITY & OSGOODE HALL LAW SCHOOL

Osgoode Hall Law School’s institutional repository collects scholarly output and records the life and activity of the Osgoode Hall Law School under one umbrella. The aim of the ODC is to preserve and provide open access to the research produced by Osgoode faculty members. It also hosts Osgoode’s journals including one of Canada’s premiere peer-reviewed law journals, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal.

York Space Institutional Repository. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/

YorkSpace is York University’s Institutional Repository. It is a platform that enables York community members to organize and preserve their research online in an institutional context. It showcases the scholarship of the York University community through the use of a special standards-based software platform that collects usage statistics and provides exceptional visibility on the web.

York University Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists. https://www.library.yorku.ca/web/open/

York University’s open access policy seeks to coordinate campus-wide access and data management, to articulate a framework and coordinate service models that support faculty, and to create a wider forum for discussion and consideration on change to the system of scholarship, access to publicly funded research, authors rights in the digital age, and new scholarly distribution mechanisms.

FULL-TEXT RESOURCES

Directory of Open Access Books. https://www.doabooks.org

The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB… The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards.

Directory of Open Access Journals. https://doaj.org/

DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent. All funding is via donations, 18% of which comes from sponsors and 82% from supporters and publisher supporters. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available.

LawArxiv. http://lawarxiv.info/about

LawArxiv is a legal repository of pre-print scholarly papers owned and maintained by members of the scholarly legal community. It provides open access to legal scholarship and is supported the Center for Open Science and Cornell Law Library. It was developed by three law library consortia: Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA), Mid-American Law Library Consortium (MALLCO), and NELLCO Law Library Consortium, Inc., as well as by Cornell Law Library.

Open Science Directory. http://www.opensciencedirectory.net/

An open access directory of 13,000 scientific journals worldwide. Developed by EBSCO and Hasselt University Library, the OSD is a global search tool for open access science journals and enhances access to scientific literature by indexing direct links to journals and their articles.

TOOLS

Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/about

A non-profit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges by providing Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools

OpenDOAR. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/

What other open access repositories exist? OpenDOAR is the quality-assured, global Directory of Open Access Repositories. You can search and browse through thousands of registered repositories based on a range of features, such as location, software or type of material held.

ORCID. https://orcid.org

ORCID is part of the wider digital infrastructure needed for researchers to share information on a global scale. They enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and affiliations by providing an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities.

ROARMap. http://roarmap.eprints.org/

The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) is a searchable international registry charting the growth of open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require or request their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository.

SHERPA Fact. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/fact/

SHERPA Fact is an online resource that combines and interprets data from Sherpa Romeo, Sherpa Juliet and other sources to provide clear guidance to researchers on whether a journal they wish to publish in complies with UKRI Research Councils, Wellcome Trust and Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) open access policies, and offers advice on available options.

SHERPA Juliet. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/

SHERPA Juliet is a searchable database and single focal point of up-to-date information concerning funders’ policies and their requirements on open access, publication and data archiving.

SHERPA Ref. https://ref.sherpa.ac.uk/

Sherpa Ref helps authors and institutions decide whether a journal allows them to comply with the OA REF policy.

SHERPA Romeo. https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.

Think Check Submit. https://thinkchecksubmit.org/about-2/

Think. Check. Submit. helps researchers identify trusted journals and publishers for their research. Through a range of tools and practical resources, this international, cross-sector initiative aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.

ORGANIZATIONS

Free Access to Law Movement. http://www.falm.info/  

The Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) is an international voluntary association with members from more than 60 organizations from around the world. FALM members support the Montreal Declaration on Free Access to Law and are dedicated to providing free access to legal information. 

International Open Access Week. http://www.openaccessweek.org/page/about

OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). https://sparcopen.org/

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on our investment in research and education

OPEN ACCESS & COVID-19

Kiley, R. (2020, May 21). Open access: How COVID-19 will change the way research findings are shared. Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://wellcome.org/news/open-access-how-covid-19-will-change-way-research-findings-are-shared

Open Access lessons during Covid-19: No lockdown for research results! (2020, June 08). Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://www.coalition-s.org/open-access-lessons-during-covid-19-no-lockdown-for-research-results/

Open COVID Pledge. https://opencovidpledge.org/

A recent initiative allowing individuals and organizations to pledge the removal of barriers to the use of their intellectual property through a license that details the terms and conditions under which intellectual property is made available in order to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.