On the open-access publishing model, in which journal articles or other academic works are made available to readers free of charge.
Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. OA is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters.
In publishing, OA means free access to material. Open access journals give open access to all or a sizable part of their articles. Journals may also use a "hybrid" model in which only some of their articles are OA.
Many OA advocates support this unrestricted access because they believe the results of tax-payer funded research should be shared; since citizens have paid for this research, they should be able to access it at no additional charge.
Many OA advocates also support unrestricted access because knowledge itself, or information, is a public good. A public good is something beneficial to everyone who seeks it, without added use diminishing its value. Common examples of public goods include: law enforcement, lighthouses, clean air and other environmental goods, and information goods, such as software development, authorship, and invention.
Note : This tag wiki has content adapted from Wikipedia and from MIT, both used under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.
