Universities have a responsibility to reduce barriers in student learning, and one way to do this is through creating textbooks that are free to students.
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African research is largely invisible, kept in the shadows by publishing barriers and structural obstacles. A platform built in Brazil and rolled out across the developing world could be the solution.
It’s one thing for a country’s academics to produce great research – but what’s the point if ordinary citizens can’t access it?
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South Africans’ access to important knowledge and research is incredibly limited. In this time of Open Access, why is this the case – and will it ever change?
Open access allows users to download, copy, print and distribute works, without the need to ask for permission or to pay.
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To the mark the eighth annual Open Access Week, we asked our readers what they wanted to know about the initiative. Here are their questions with answers from our experts.
Data needs to be an open book if science is to be made more reliable.
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We have the technology and the will to expand open access to publicly funded research, but large vested interests are still putting up stiff resistance.
A light at the end of the tunnel for academic publishing?
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The open-access movement, which aims to provide researchers and the public with free access to academic work, has been growing. But most academic research remains behind expensive paywalls, which decreases…
The demand for open access resulted in an explosion of refereed journals, free to anyone that wanted to view them.
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Open access has become the catch-cry of academic science, demanding all research be freely available to anyone. But it leaves open the question of how publishers are to make money. Traditionally, libraries…
Journal publishing is changing at a breakneck pace.
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According to Peter Suber open access is academic literature which is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions”. Open access delivered by journals is called…