Open access

Open Access – broadly understood, it refers to universal, remote access to content (both publications and research data) with the possibility of free re-use, respecting copyright. It is also a necessary condition for the existence of open science.

From the legal point of view, open access is divided into:

open access for free – aking content available within the limits specified by the copyright law with fair use, i.e. with the limitation of use to one’s own needs, for didactic purposes or for the purpose of quoting in a scientific publication;
open access libre – sharing content in the public domain or under licenses enabling unlimited, free and non-exclusive use, with the obligation (except in the public domain) to provide information about the author, the subject of the license and its provisions, or to use the same license in derivative works. This highest degree of openness is guaranteed by the public domain and free Creative Commons licenses (CC BY and CC BY-SA).

Due to the way content is shared, open access can be implemented on the basis of different models, the three main of which are:

gold open access – providing open access for free or libre by the publisher by publishing the work in an article processing charge (APC) journal;
diamond open access – is a form of golden open access, but differs from it by the lack of copyright fees (APC);
green open access – providing open access for free or libre by the author by depositing the work in the repository.

Repository – an IT tool for (self) publishing, (self) archiving and sharing current scientific achievements. There are two main types of repositories:

institutional repository – used for (self) publishing, (self) archiving and sharing the current intellectual work of the academic community related to a given institution;
domain repository – used for (self) publishing, (self) archiving and sharing content related to a specific field of science, regardless of where they are created.

When depositing a publication in a repository, it may be useful to distinguish between their versions:

preprint – a preliminary version of a publication before a scientific review and dissemination in the publisher’s official version;
postprint – scientifically peer-reviewed final version of a publication before dissemination in the publisher’s official version;

and the use of publishing policy databases, i.e. platforms collecting information on the rules for further sharing of publications adopted by publishers of various magazines:

Sherpa Romeo (unfortunately, there are still few Polish magazines and publishers there)
Baza polityk wydawniczych polskich czasopism naukowych [Database of publishing policies of Polish scientific journals] (platform run by the team of the Gdańsk University of Technology Library),

as well as with the help of an interactive website created by the Open Science Platform team, which allows you to easily obtain basic knowledge about the legal aspects of open access, useful for authors, publishers, research units and research funding institutions:

Legal assistant to the Open Science Platform [PL: Pomocnik Prawny Platformy Otwartej Nauki]

Documents and materials on open access posted on the website of the Ministry of Education and Science:

Additional information: PhD Agnieszka Adamiec, tel. 22 59 35 720; e-mail – agnieszka_adamiec@sggw.edu.pl