Research Preprint: “Open Access –Towards a Non-Normative and Systematic Understanding”
The following article (preprint) was recently posted to arXiv.
Title
Open Access –Towards a Non-Normative and Systematic Understanding
Authors
Niels Taubert
Bielefeld University
Anne Hobert
University of Göttingen
Nick Fraser
Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (ZBW)
Najko Jahn
University of Göttingen
Elham Iravani
Bielefeld University
Source
via arXiv
Abstract
The term Open Access not only describes a certain model of scholarly publishing — namely in digital format freely accessible to readers — but often also implies that free availability of research results is desirable, and hence has a normative character. Together with the large variety of presently used definitions of different Open Access types, this normativity hinders a systematic investigation of the development of open availability of scholarly literature. In this paper, we propose a non-normative definition of Open Access and its usage as a neutral, descriptive term in bibliometric studies and research on science. To this end, we first specify what normative figures are commonly associated with the term Open Access and then develop a neutral definition. We further identify distinguishing characteristics of openly accessible literature, called dimensions, and derive a classification scheme into Open Access categories based on these dimensions. Additionally, we present an operationalisation method to assign scientific publications to the respective categories in practice. Here, we describe useful data sources, which can be employed to gather the information needed for the classification of scholarly works according to the presented classification scheme.
Direct to Full Text Article (Preprint; October 25, 2018)
16 pages; PDF.
Filed under: Data Files, Journal Articles, News, Open Access, Publishing
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.