Dartmouth credentials provide abundant access to research. However, for many people in our region, and around the world, searches for scholarship lead to a hefty paywall. Imagine learning you have a rare illness, finding a recent paper on an experimental new treatment, and having to pay $50 just to read about it. These barriers not only impede progress but represent stark inequity. This problem is precisely what open access seeks to solve.

What is open access?

As philosopher Peter Suber puts it in A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access, 

Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.

Ultimately, the idea is in the name itself. Research once locked behind physical and financial barriers becomes open and accessible for all.

Shifting publishing models to open access is an uphill battle involving institutions, funders, and age-old publishers who have long operated under a subscription model.

How do the Libraries support open access?

The Libraries advance a paradigm shift to open access in various ways.

Publisher Agreements

Through a growing list of negotiated agreements with publishers, Dartmouth authors receive full or partial coverage for open access publication charges (sometimes called APCs).

The Libraries partner and collaborate with various organizations to create a more open and sustainable research publishing ecosystem, some of which you can find below.

• CrossRef runs open infrastructure that captures links between different elements of the scholarly record to make it both durable and reusable. 
• HathiTrust is a digital library committed to preserving the published record and making it accessible to all.
• LOCKSS provides open-source technologies and services for digital preservation.
• OSF Preprints offers open-source infrastructure for preprint servers. 
• ORCID provides a unique, persistent identifier (PID) that researchers can use across institutions and publication activities to collate their record of scholarly contributions.