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Scholarly Metrics for UVM Faculty: Open Access

What is Open Access (OA)?

As defined by SPARC, "open access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment." Open access (OA) is related to scholarly metrics because it is changing the landscape of academic publishing and traditional metric models. For this reason, OA is also often discussed in relationship with RPT (Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure).

Questions about OA? Feel free to contact us with general questions or specific inquiries related to your publishing needs. We are happy to help evaluate journals, check your copyright permissions, and navigate scholarly publishing.

UVM ScholarWorks

Our institutional repository, UVM ScholarWorks, collects, preserves, and shares the scholarly and creative works of University of Vermont faculty, staff, students, and their collaborators.

UVM faculty (and students!) can deposit scholarly work that can be made available free of charge to other scholars through Google Scholar and other sources. This is Green OA and a cost-effective alternative to Hybrid OA article processing charges.

Once deposited, ScholarWorks offers excellent download metrics for authors including date and geographic location of download and (if pertinent) the institution where the article was downloaded.  Results can be viewed in map, table, or graph format.  

Contact us to help check your article rights and upload content into ScholarWorks.

Levels of Open Access

The main types or levels of open access (OA) are:

  • Gold: Articles published directly in an OA journal and immediately, openly available via the publisher's website.
  • Green: Articles published in traditional journals but then self-archived by the author in a repository or OA archive.
  • Hybrid: Traditional subscription journals that offer an OA option if authors pay a (typically hefty) publishing fee, known as an article processing charge (APC).
  • Bronze: Articles published in traditional journals but made freely available at the discretion of the publisher without a formal license, meaning no guarantee of reuse or permanency.

Categories denoting various levels of access and reuse continue to evolve and come in and out of use. Other types you might see include: Libre, Gratis, Delayed, Black.

Check Your Rights

Select OA Resources